Scan 2 Go Review

Posted on December 20, 2014 by dreager1

Scan 2 Go is a show that I started a little over 2 years ago. It was a pretty solid series, but then it was pulled from TV…never to be shown again. Now, it has finally made it to Youtube so I got to blast through the final 7-8 episodes. Let’s just say that this is a great show that really manages to hit it out of the park in several areas. On the surface it’s just another awesome toyetic show, but it decides to go all Gurren Lagann on us in the final 2. This title is pretty obscure so let’s go over the plot first.

There’s a plot? Of course! Kaz Gordan is from Earth and he has three friends. Together, they form Team Jet and they are training to become the best racers in the universe. Scan 2 Go is a futuristic game that lets you mentally synchronize with your (tiny) toy car as you travel across dangerous tracks. The game never really hit it off on Earth, but every other planet is playing it. Kaz convinces his teacher to let Team Jet travel across the universe after he crushes him in a toy car fight. The heroes win tournament after tournament as they meet strange allies and tricky villains. There are many tournaments and training sessions throughout the show, but it’s difficult to call them actual arcs. One of the big story arcs was when the team went to Gurao to train since that’s where they got to bond with their allies. Finally, the team went back to Earth for the universal tournament. The final Grand Prix to decide who the fastest racer in the universe is. Unfortunately….an old enemy has decided to show up as well. There will be much more about that in a moment.

Scan 2 Go’s animation is actually pretty good. To an extent, I expected this, but it really shines during the space battles or really any scene with Ryu. The energy attacks are great and I’m convinced that this show could have pulled off a hand to hand battle scene. How does it stack up against other toyetic shows? I think that the animation is behind Cardfight and Buddyfight, but it beats Tenkai Knights and the original Yugioh series. Animation isn’t typically a gamechanger for a show, but it sure makes the racing scenes more exciting. I can’t say that any episodes had bad animation and that’s always a good thing.

The soundtrack for the show is one of its biggest strengths. There are technically not a whole lot of themes in the show since the old ones just play again and again and again. That’s all right though since they’re so good. From the starting theme, “Scan 1….” so Ryu’s theme, Scan 2 Go’s music selections are intense. The Ryu one is definitely intense and it makes for a very good villain theme. It’s in sharp contrast to the racing theme that typically plays since that one is very fast, but hopeful. Unfortunately, the opening isn’t very good, but this is the kind of show that can get by that thanks to all of its other strengths.

Let’s talk about Ryu. He changed the entire series, which is very impressive. Until he showed up, Kaz just had fun outracing everyone and showing them why his Falgor was the best car in the biz. That all changed when Ryu introduced the notion of racing to destroy the other competitors. His car is the fastest and the strongest in the series so none of the other racers can hope to beat him in a fair race. Luckily, that’s not what he wants anyway. He just wants to destroy the universe! As you can imagine, that was pretty shocking to see in this show. Until then, one could argue that the strongest fighters weren’t even planet busters…so how did we upgrade to universe busting?

Well, Ryu is a living embodiment of a black hole and the power gem that is on his forehead gives him additional power. His car has the ability to instantly regenerate injuries although it may just be Ryu’s ability that transfers to the car since they are fully synchronized. Ryu is so great that he actually pulls off a feat that people have been waiting for DBZ to show. He destroys a moon just by having his car ram into someone else’s. It’s a great scene and it’s pretty tragic since you’re not used to seeing other people get injured in this show. That being said, Ryu goes even farther than that.

Only one character is destroyed in the entire series and you can probably guess who did that. Ryu has a climatic battle with the greatest racer in the universe..or at least, the man who was the greatest racer in the universe. It was a very fun, high budget battle in space and we got to see both of them really put everything on the line. That was easily the darkest episode and the moment where the series had changed forever. It’s hard not to quickly begin to love Ryu as a villain. He toys with all of the heroes and he is the only one who seems to realize that their cars can be used as weapons. After all, they can shoot thunder, make tsunamis, black holes, etc. Why should they only be used in races?

Another reason why the final episodes were so great was because we finall got to see the mysterious council make their move. It really felt like a moment out of Shonen Jump when we got to see Ryu fight these new characters. They all had unique powers and they talked a good game so it was pretty great. I don’t think anyone ever questioned who would win the fight, but it was just fun to see. Ryu’s car also gets to smash through an entire army and it can move so quickly that it turns into a giant meteor.

It doesn’t stop there though as its gravity powers (Or Ryu’s) are enough to push the Moon out of orbit and send it crashing to Earth. Ryu’s universe destroying plan is also rather simple. His car just needs to win one more big race to have enough power to make a black hole big enough to suck everything in. (He absorbs the powers of those he has defeated after all) Naturally, Kaz and friends are here to stop him so it ends up being a 8-12 vs 1 matchup in the final battle. It’s pretty great to see, but the heroes sure look weak and completely out of their league compared to such a fighter.

The heroes are able to let their cars reach FTL speeds as well, although I found Ryu’s feat more impressive since he was doing it on his own. That being said, it’s intense to see them just cruising past planets on their way to victory. I also have to give the show some props since the easy way would have been to just have had Ryu die when they pushed him into the sun. Let’s just say that it’s not enough to stop him. I think that he should have been able to have just left and regrouped somewhere else, but it was pretty much impossible to stop him so they had to end everything somehow. At least the heroes got to try their luck at pushing a moon. It’s a good strength feat since we need to keep in mind that Wonder Woman, Superman, and Martian Manhunter teaming up couldn’t move the moon while the heroes from Gurao were able to move it. (Even more impressive is that the Moon was already crashing so it’s different from pushing a Moon that’s in orbit.) Other heroes come to help after that, but the heroes already got the main job done.

Now, all of this does bring to mind one big concern with the sport and why you have wonder about how safe it is. The show is rather inconsistent in showing just how synchronized you are with the car, but it seems to suggest that you feel the virtual damage that you car does. It’s why the humans will wince or groan with pain after a big attack or end up getting knocked down. They also seem to abandon the real world completely, but is this physical or just mental? At the very least, your conciousness leaves like in Sword Art Online, but other times we see the fighters just appear where the cars are. (Even if it’s thousands of miles away from the arena) So, it’s possible that their physical bodies are able to instantly warp to their cars or they are spirited away during the match. However, they stay at the racetrack at other times to trade insults with the others.

Ultimately, I don’t think that the show could really make up its mind on this. I’ll just think of it as throwing your conciousness into the car, which is why you feel the damage and wind up wherever the car is. After all, we can’t really look at Zero’s battle with Ryu any other way. How else could he breathe in space and follow Ryu there? (Ryu can breathe in space, but he’s not even human so it’s all right) I’ll just add that you can quickly go back to the real world as well or stay there the whole time depending how synched you are with your car. Naturally, this means that mind games work very well in this series.

I still haven’t mentioned what the risk of racing is have I? Well, if you feel the virtual damage, then you are put at great risk. One fighter ended up synching with his car while in space so when the car was blown up, the guy was either blown up with it or he ended up suffocating. Luckily, it seems to be the former. Another guy is obliterated by an energy blast because his car was. There’s no way that you can find this hobby safe and it makes you wonder about all of the one shot characters who got crushed throughout the series. It seems like the virtual damage doesn’t affect you if you don’t have a high synch rate so the throwaway characters might be safe, but it’s still hard to see how this sport is condoned. Maybe that’s why Earth isn’t exactly head over heels for it. Well, that’s enough about how awesome the series is for now, let’s look at the rest of the characters. (Since I basically already talked about Ryu a lot. He’s my favorite character in the series while I have to boot Kaz down to number 2)

Before Ryu took the spot, Kaz had been my favorite character in the series from the very first episode. He’s just awesome and a shining example of how I want my main characters to look. Kaz doesn’t pull any punches whether he’s racing against little kids or old men. In the very first episode he ends up beating his mentor so that he could escape Earth and race in the big leagues. It was pretty cool since the future is luckily safe enough that 10 year old kids can fly around the cosmos unchaperoned. (Unless you count their little robot friend.) Kaz always has a lot of determination and he constantly mentions how he wants to be the Fastest in the Universe. It’s a noble goal to be sure and one to be proud of. He makes quite a few rivals along the way, but he’s never outmatched for very long. His car’s special ability is that it can fly, which actually isn’t one of the better abilities, but it hasn’t failed him yet. While Ryu wields the power of darkness, Kaz holds the power of light and there are only two to three other characters who have wielded a similar power in the past. Zero and one of Kaz’s masters come to mind. Unfortunately, he only uses it a few times throughout the series and surprisingly not in the final fight. That’s a missed opportunity, but it doesn’t stop Kaz from being one of the best main characters out there. I agree with just about all of his decisions and he doesn’t make any huge mistakes throughout the series. No, Kaz is all about the win and then the team..in that order. His Galaxy Falgor is also cooler than almost every other car in the series.

Shiro is the main rival of the series, which guarantees him a spot in the top 5 of the series. He has ice abilities so he can freeze an entire battlefield and stop everyone in their tracks with minimal effort. Unfortunately, he can’t totally control this power and he ends up turning into a wolf sometimes. He seems to be part of a wolf changing species, but he looks pretty human while in..human mode. His car is pretty great since aside from ice abilities, he can also teleport. That is very handy to have in a race and it’s hard to see Shiro ever losing once he gets that power. To an extent..you’d be right, but it’s also partially because his role is lessened a whole lot by that point. By the end, he’s barely in the show anymore aside to just be in the background. No matter, he’s still a pretty great character. The only part of the show where he got to be a little annoying was when he was having a lot of internal drama and he let Ryu play him like a puppet. That was pretty sad, but luckily it was also very brief. Shiro is one of the only racers who can actually give Kaz a fight so he needs to stay in the game!

Zero is known as the greatest racer in the universe and Kaz has always wanted to surpass him. It’s a little sad that they never get to have a proper race since that would have been pretty great. Zero is essentially perfect, which irritates his rivals, but shows why he has so many fans. He doesn’t use any gimmicks or cheap tricks to win as he just races from start to finish. That being said, his decision to fight Ryu may not have been his greatest one. It was an awesome moment since Zero had gotten a whole lot of hype while Ryu was the mysterious son of the black hole. Zero put up a good fight since his car could shoot lasers and he held his own while in space. It was an admirable fight and it was a great way to wrap up his character arc. Let’s just say that I wasn’t going to forget him after that. I’d actually say that he is one of the coolest characters in the show and I’d probably place him at third behind Ryu and Kaz. That final fight certainly did a lot to help me gain respect for him.

Fiona is the main heroine in the series and she has a long lasting rival in Hebina. Her car’s ability is that it can navigate through a race track by using its gliders to look at the stage layout, but the writers probably realized that this wasn’t much of an ability so she gains thunder powers as the series goes on. Those are very useful to be sure so I was glad that she got those new powers. She likes to think that she’s just as good as Kaz in a race, although all of his allies seem to illogically believe that to an extent. Even if Kaz proves them wrong over and over again…their honor is at stake here! She’s definitely better than Myron and Diego, but Shiro would take the number 2 spot on Team Jet…if we decide to count him. She’s definite a pretty likable ally and at least her skills are considerable. She may be top 3 as far as toyetic heroines are concerned, which is a feat in itself.

Diego is the Dex/Bud/Bronx of the show. He’s always eating except when he’s too nervous or upset to do so. His car is pretty slow, but strong. The problem is that there are several other cars that are simply stronger than his, which takes away his only gimmick. How can he hope to win a true race with such a car? Typically, his will power is just that much better than his opponents so he is able to get an extra boost to win the day. I can’t say that I believed many of his wins though and he’s not one of the better allies. He gets a subplot where he feels like he is the weakest member on the team and the sad part is that it’s probably true. Kaz puts a lot of effort into training, but we never see Diego proactively decide to do this. He’s too interested in eating so why should he expect to be strong? It was emotional and all, but he really doesn’t add anything to the show. I still wouldn’t go as far as to say that he’s a bad character though. He’s just not that good.

Myron is one member of Team Jet that I definitely didn’t care for. He’s the smart member of the group, but that doesn’t stop him from still wanting to be one of the fastest racers in the universe. He’s asking for too much if you ask me. His Storm Slazer actually has a pretty good design and it’s gimmick is that it can drive well over ice, sand, and water. It can also drill under the track to hide if necessary. The problem is that Myron is always quick to turn against Kaz since nothing can ever be his fault. He’s worse than Diego and some of the allies from Gurao, which is pretty sad for him. He was definitely a little worse than I could have expected.

Dradd was Kaz’s first rival and he stayed with him until the very end. He has a rivalry with Ryu going on, but he has to get in line since Kaz and Taiga also have beef with the guy. His car’s special ability is that it can hit the ground hard enough to make it jump forward. It’s pretty nifty, but not that practical compared to the other cars. Power is his thing like with Diego and Ryu, but he’s probably second in that category. He talks tough and he is older than Kaz, but he had to start his training from scratch since he had stopped improving. He’s the best member from Gurao. That may not be saying a lot, but his races are fun to watch and I definitely wouldn’t call him a bad character. He’s outmatched against Kaz, but that’s just his bad luck right?

Taiga is Kaz’s second rival and I guess that makes him rivals with Dradd as well to an extent. He races so that he can become better than Zero and then a big rivalry starts with Ryu. He is a good racer, but his will power isn’t so great and he can be manipulated rather easily. He’s not bad, but he tries to act a little too cool at different points and it just doesn’t work. He’s a decent rival, but I’d say that Kaz is clearly superior in a race. I could probably take Taiga a little more seriously if he could have convincingly defeated Diego in the race, but it was a little too close for comfort. He talks really tough the whole series, but he’s usually on the losing end of a race. At least he learned the values of friendship by the end…

I’m starting to realize that the sad characters were not great in this show. I liked Shiro, Zero, Kaz, Fiona, Dradd, and Ryu. That sounds like a lot, but considering how many characters are in the show…that’s a pretty small number. I just ended up not really feeling like the other characters were that good. Kraken is no exception as he is a King who enjoys the game, but it rather overconfident about it. His voice doesn’t help matters at all, but the worst part is that he just doesn’t seem to be that good. His car can shoot large waves of water, which is a pretty great technique, but his car isn’t great on the ground…and that’s where almost all of the races take place. He bonds with the heroes at one point, which gets them all on his side, but he didn’t get me on his side.

Hebina might be the worst member from the Gurao team since she is clearly a villain who just happens to race. Her abilities are not great so she constantly cheats to ensure that she claims victory in her battles. None of the other characters call her out on this half the time and she certainly didn’t earn her spot with the best in the Final Grand Prix. Her theme is also awful and the only piece of music that I didn’t like. It’s not an exaggeration to say that she may be the worst character in the show. Her gimmick is that her car can make illusions so that it looks like her car has multiplied. It’s not very original though since a shadow council member could do that with his car and likewise with Kaz’s original teacher. She’s going to have to do better than that if she wants to be an expert racer and hopefully she becomes likable someday…but the sequel series would really need to change her character to make that possible.

Jack is a cop who also happens to be a racer and he’s definitely not likable. He’s probably the weakest racer from Gurao and it’s hard to even remember what his gimmick is. He definitely has something since his character needs a gimmick, but it probably wasn’t that great. He has a hero moment towards the end of the series where he destroys a meteor, but it just doesn’t make up for a whole series. He needs to just stick to one field and master it instead of dabbling in both. He constantly goes after Hebina, which would be okay if it was just to arrest her, but he doesn’t take his job seriously enough for that. He just likes to give her a hard time. He must have been lucky to have made it to the final grand prix.

Ray is Kaz’s teacher from Earth and he’s pretty cool. His attitude is similar to Kakashi’s in that he is always very confident and mysterious. It’s a little hard to take him seriously since he was defeated in the very first episode of the series and then disappeared until around episode 49, but he quickly made up for this in the final race. His skills are apparently up there with some of the world’s best and that’s pretty cool to see. From Kaz’s three teachers he was definitely the best. Master Hippopo is arguably the strongest master since he’s the leader of the super council and he fought Ryu, but he was certainly not very likable. The only good scene with Hippopo aside from his fight against Ryu was probably his “death” in one of the earlier episodes since Kaz got to have a rage moment as he dueled against Hebina. Now that was intense!

Antares was one of the less interesting members of the main guys. He is a publicity guy first and foremost. He like to always be in the spotlight and he acts as if his races are just shows for his adoring fans. That ultimate comes back to bite him in the final episode. His car’s gimmick is that it can use its tail to do a flip on the track so that it can dodge attacks. It’s pretty useful, but definitely not the greatest bonus for when it comes down to a contest of speed. I just don’t really find him to be that likable and I also doubt his skills.

I have to say that the ending wasn’t great though. I Loved the huge climax and how out there is got, but some parts were still a little disappointing. One part that I was underwhelmed by was Kaz’s big charge against Ryu. He decided that winning on his friends sacrifices wouldn’t be worth it so he attacked Ryu in a rage moment. Unfortunately, he is just thrown to the side and he couldn’t deal any damage. He didn’t even last 5 seconds so that was pretty sad. I also think that they should have just said that Kaz was the winner at the end instead of just saying that all fans of the series were winners. That’s a bit of a cop out right?

Overall, Scan 2 Go is a great show and it’s certainly not one that you’ll want to miss out on. The series mostly doesn’t have a whole lot of stakes in it since it’s just about seeing the heroes race as they get through their challenges, but that definitely changes once Ryu enters the show. Before Ryu’s appearance the show still would have gotten a 7 easily, but his battles gave it the push that it needed to reach the elusive 8. It’s a great experience from start to finish and the visuals as well as the soundtrack only help to enhance that. Kaz is a likable main character and Ryu’s a great villain so you don’t need to worry about the characters dragging it down. Some subplots like Shiro’s origin don’t really go anywhere and we could have done without it, but maybe it’ll be in a sequel at some point. Regardless, the show just wins on all accounts so you definitely want to see it as soon as possible!

Overall 8/10

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

Attack on Titan Review

Posted on November 24, 2014 by dreager1

Attack on Titan has easily become on of the most popular anime titles of all time. It became an overnight sensation when the anime started airing and rose to heights that only premiere titles like DBZ, One Piece, and Sword Art Online reside. I wasn’t born early enough to fully appreciate the hype of DBZ and One Piece was more of a gradual burst than such a quick burst. So, I can only compare it to Sword Art Online in that regard and I’ll make more comparisons as the review goes on. Let’s face it, you’ve probably seen the poster above this a million times by now. It’s a pretty incredible way to hype up the show. I did read the manga prior to watching the show so I knew what to expect and it definitely isn’t my cup of tea, but the series had so much potential that it’s scary. It’s a series that really had everything in its favor (Like Sword Art Online) and just messed up on some of the fundamentals, which held it back.

The Earth is not how you may have remembered it. Titans have conquered the planet and what’s left of humanity now hides behind a group of large walls that separates them into a few groups. There are the Survey Corps who try to regain some of the lost land and the Military Police who like to lounge around and just try to enjoy their lives. We also have the normal people who just have to endure this existence. It’s tough because their food supplies are diminishing and the area won’t be able to hold everyone forever. Unfortunately, the Titans are basically invincible since their only weak point is a spot at the back of their head and they can regenerate all other injuries pretty quickly. Turns out that a boy named Eren may be the last hope for humanity thanks to his….you ready for a possible spoiler depending on if you count it? His Titan ability may be their only chance! (I wouldn’t really call it a spoiler since that’s one of the big selling points)

Well, where to start right? I think that I’ll start with some of the big positives so you can see just how much the show had going for it. I’m not typically into voice acting since most voices are good enough for me to still enjoy the characters, but Attack on Titan has one of the best voice actors in the business for the main character. This is a great advantage since Eren’s personality revolves around his constant yelling and determination. He’s constantly talking back to someone or thinking up a plan. He’s a great main character in many respects while falling short in others. I’ll talk about him more in detail later, but the voices are very good for the show.

The animation is pretty great as well. I don’t consider it to be very legendary or awe inspiring, but you can still tell that this is a relatively new anime. The main reason why it is not used to its fullest extent is because the anime is very grounded. There are no energy attacks or cool designs to really be found here. That being said, we get glimpses of how the animation could have looked when Eren transforms or when you see a gleam in the Female Titan’s eye. The animation is pretty in depth and it’s another positive to throw in Attack on Titan’s corner.

We also can’t forget that Attack on Titan has one of the greatest soundtracks in anime history. There are very few shows that can even come close to attaining the array of songs that Titan possesses. Everything from the openings to the talking themes to the battle music is great here. There are naturally many themes that aren’t as good as the others, but I can name at least 5 very catchy themes and that’s a great amount. The main Titan theme is a classic, Mikasa’s theme when she tries to avenge Eren is awesome and Eren’s final awakening during the second last episode had a great theme as well. These themes really enhance the scenes and make everything a lot better. It’s hard for you to stop your heart from racing when the music starts to pick up.

Finally, the show also had a great director. I don’t know who directed the show, but he knew what he was doing. It’s basically the opposite of what I’ve come to expect from Naruto Shippuden. He can make just about any scene interesting. That’s something that many shows simply can’t pull off. Even if it’s just your average “Characters Introduction Montage” it will still be infinitely more interesting than if someone else had attempted to adapt that scene.

As you can see, Attack on Titan had some supremely overwhelming positives on that side. Stellar voice acting, An amazing soundtrack, great animation…..how could it not be the next big thing? Well, you can have these positives over and over, but you won’t get very far if the source material is no good. That’s the case with this series and it’s where things start to go downhill.

It’s different from what happened with Sword Art Online. Sword Art Online had all of the positives that I just mentioned for Attack on Titan and it was on pace to become one of my favorite shows of all time. Then arc 2 happened and the show went from being a possible 9 all the way down to a 5. It was just terrible and distasteful. Attack on Titan sets the tone from the very first episode and I knew that things were going to get dicey very quickly.

The big factor that really shreds Attack on Titan is the excessive violence. Toonami somehow managed to squeak a TV 14 for this show, but you can definitely tell tat it’s basically at a TV MA level. I think the only reason why the show gets away with it is because the Titans are like monsters and we know how lenient the rating system is with Godzilla. The show may tone down the manga at certain points, but it also increases the violence in others. Case in point, the final battle between the Rogue Titan and the Female Titan. Many parts of that fight were made up or extended to make the fight that much more drastic. It went way over the top in several scenes and you couldn’t root for either one of them. It’s hard to decide which episode was worse, the final one or the first one. Both of them are fighting for last place alongside one of the Hange episodes.

Mixing the excessive violence with the dreary tone of Attack on Titan is definitely a devastating combo for the series. It’s actually day time in just about every episode, which is why I can’t really think of it as a horror series, but they do make sure to show you that the humans are doomed just about every episode. The series is way too dramatic for its own goods and the heroes are constantly talking about how corrupt everyone is. There will also be a background character in just about every episode who panics and gets the crowd going. A lot of characters express how they don’t want to die just before doing so. These things are here to provide us with more emotional or shock value, but it gets old after it happens over and over again.

Because of this, I found that most of my favorite episodes in the series were the ones without any actual fighting. I’d compare it to Fate/Zero as the characters are very interesting and the world building is solid. I think the show could have scored at around a 7 if it had just been about their strategy discussions and then we skipped the actual fights. Of course, there are exceptions. The Hange episodes didn’t typically have any fighting, but they were pretty bad. On the other hand, the first battle between the Rogue and Female Titans was pretty good for the most part. So, I can only say that the majority of the action scenes were what drove it down.

Some episodes seemed to handle the fight scenes better than others. One episode may have someone destroying a Titan and it appears to be very violent while another may take down a Titan without that much blood. It really varied on who was animating the episode or how much emphasis they had to make. I was pretty disappointed with the final fight in the series because they definitely wanted it to have an extreme ending. The animation itself may have hurt it there as well since they make sure that the Female Titan looks very ugly and deranged by the end. Of course, Attack on Titan would not be very popular without the action so it’s certainly a double edged sword.

Eren is a pretty intriguing character. He doesn’t really like to eat as you would expect from the typical main character and he’s actually decently intelligent. He does have a lot of determination and he’s quick to get into a fight, but he’s definitely not your average main character. He’s a good character to an extent, but it can still be a little hard to root for him since he’s forced to bend to the show’s rules. He hesitates before attacking one of the villains and you can make a lot of guesses as to why. Does he simply not want to destroy her? Can he still not believe that she is an enemy? Or is he just afraid that he will lose? Ultimately, it doesn’t matter because he just enters into a rage moment and attacks without mercy. There are many times like this where he just gives into the rage and forgets what is going on. He certainly yells more than most main characters, but the voice actor assures that this is done flawlessly.

He is pretty brave and he’ll definitely put his life on the line to help his friends without hesitation. He wants to save the world and his goals are just. It’s just too bad that he lets the government push him around so much. It’s also hard for him to control the titan form for a while and you would think that it wouldn’t take so much effort with his determination. After some twists that are shown at the end of the season, it really makes you think about it. I don’t think that there is a really good reason for Eren to have that kind of trouble. He overestimates his abilities, but that doesn’t stop him from trying. As a kid, Eren manages to take on two adults, which is impressive.

Eren does face one big decision towards the end of the series where it’s tough to know what to do. To avoid spoilers, I’ll offer up a hypothetical of a similar scenario with the same options. You are the only human who can turn into a titan and then your squad is attacked by a Mega Titan. You are with the world’s strongest human and a group of elites. The strong guy is the leader and he tells you to stand down as you guys will just continue to run away. The Titan is gaining ground and you can choose to turn around and fight (At which point the leader and the elites will enter the fray to back you up) or you can trust in the leader and keep on going. Eren makes one choice and I made the other one. I’ll give you a hint…sometimes the leader’s judgment has been clouded from experience. Either way, I suppose that I can’t…..fine, I do blame Eren for making the wrong choice. It cost a lot of lives and I didn’t think that it was a close decision It was a no brainer for me and that didn’t help Eren’s case. Also, one of the series’ ongoing messages is about how you have to forsake yourself and become a beast to defeat one. Eren is constantly told to let go of his humanity and to truly join the ranks of mindless monsters/evil. He basically starts to listen by the end and most of the other heroes are already corrupt through and through. I certainly wouldn’t call Eren a bad main character, but he definitely could have been a lot better and I could see him going downhill from here. We’ve already seen that he is starting to crack and let’s just say that his hatred for the titans continues to grow as time goes by.

Mikasa is the main heroine and she is one of the toughest fighters. From the start we see that Eren is the loud main character who is determined to win while Mikasa is the silent, but deadly assassin. She destroys more titans than just about any other character in the series. Levi is probably the only one who possibly matches her in that regard. The show makes it clear that Levi is still the more skilled fighter, but considering that Mikasa didn’t have any real combat training at the beginning, she did really well. Her rage moment where she attacks a group of titans to avenge Eren is great and she also takes on the Female Titan, a great feat for a human. She’s easily the best character in the show.

Levi is the fan favorite character and you’re reminded why he’s supposed to be an awesome character with just about every line. He is able to fight the Female Titan and hold his own with relative ease and he’s supposed to be the strongest human in existence. His speed is completely superhuman and you can’t doubt his abilities. That being said, I can’t say that he’s a very likable character. He went way over the top when beating down Eren and it was hard to find him likable after that. It may have helped Eren out in the long run, but there were surely other ways that they could have accomplished that. I also don’t think Eren should have lived through such a beating, at least the way that it was animated. Levi is one of the characters who goes downhill from here so brace yourself as season 2 approaches.

Annie’s role will seem to be that of the overshadowed side character for a while. She’s a part of the squad along with a few other guys from the intro montage, but then she disappears for a while. She’s pretty mellow compared to the other recruits and while she acknowledges that the world is corrupt…she doesn’t do anything about it. Really, there’s not much that you can do in such a system so I guess I don’t really blame her. Sasha is a pretty minor figure as well, but she values the importance of a good meal amidst the battles so that’s always a good thing. She’s pretty likable right from the start.

Hange is easily the worst character in the show and she does a good job of bringing the show down a even further. There is no way that you can call her a hero by any stretch of the imagination so it’s very difficult to see the main characters working alongside her. Do they not comprehend just how awful she is? She delights in the pain of others and she’s just a very warped individual. The situation has likely caused her to become insane, but the heroes shouldn’t give her such free reign. Of course, they’re not really “heroes” themselves, which makes things dicey.

The Female Titan is the final boss of the series and she’s definitely very skilled. Her hand to hand techniques are enough to give The Rogue Titan a good match, but her best advantage is easily her ability to harden a part of herself. She can use this ability to offensively attack someone or to block an attack. That’s why it’s no exaggeration to say that she may be the strongest fighter in the series. A battle between her and the Colossal Titan would certainly be interesting to say the least.

The Colossal Titan is a figure that just about everyone should know from the posters. He’s a pretty iconic titan and fans were probably disappointed when he only got a few minutes of screentime in the series. He’s definitely the kind of villain that you want to see more of. He’s more interesting than the other villains at the moment and he did have a pretty great cliffhanger during one of his appearances. Well, we can be sure that he will appear more in the next season.

Armin is one of the main characters and at times he feels more like the lead than Eren. He’s the calm and collected character who tries to set the mood for the audience. He is always going on about how we need to lose our humanity and become monsters to fight the Titans. Forsaking our morals and doing what’s “necessary” is the only way to win this war according to him. At least he’s not pretending that he’s a hero, but this starts to grate on you very quickly. He’s also not much of a fighter and he cracks one or two times. His big moments didn’t help me gain any respect for him.

Jean starts off as the classic bully and develops into the capable leader. He’s a pretty decent character by the end as he decides to fight for justice. He also doesn’t have any qualms about insulting the squad leaders as he moves up the ranks. He’s sort of like a kid version of Erwin so he hasn’t been fully corrupted yet. He could end up being one of the best characters in the series if he plays his cards right.

Erwin is Levi’s mentor so you can probably tell that he’s not going to be one of the most friendly members. He talks about strategy a lot and he’s totally willing to break a few dozen eggs in in order to make his omelet. The ends totally justify the means for him. He is dealing with a corrupt government so it’s tricky for him either way, but I couldn’t call him a hero either. It should be noted that things will likely go downhill for him in season 2 so this is really his best season.

So, time for some final comparisons to Sword Art Online. They both have a lot of similar aspects and both of them had disappointing finishes, but there can be only one winner.

Best Main Character-Sword Art Online
Best Soundtrack- Attack on Titan
Best Opening- Sword Art Online
Best Fight- Sword Art Online
Best Animation-Sword Art Online
Best Plot-Sword Art Online
Best First Half- Sword Art Online
Best Climax-Attack on Titan
Better show-Sword Art Online

I suppose that this answers the question. From the two shows that completely shattered social media and our minds as a result, Sword Art Online wins. It had an amazing beginning and I could see why it will always be remembered as a legendary anime. Attack on Titan was certainly revoloutionary in its own right and since it was Japan’s answer to the Walking Dead, you can see why it had such a large audience over in the states. The problem is that it appeals to a completely different crowd than me. I reeeeeeeally do not like the Walking Dead (I don’t like Zombies at all) and I don’t care for the concept of Titans as the main villains. It’s why I didn’t care for the concept of Attack on Titan in the first place and why all of its great features could not save the franchise.

Overall, Attack on Titan is the kind of show that you really want to like, but are unable too. The negatives manage to outweigh the positives and you’re left wishing that it could have won the battle. A video game has the potential to be pretty honest with a “Spiderman” sort of gameplay as you try to slay the titans. The franchise still has potential, but most of it has squandered and there probably isn’t a whole lot of hope left for it. The only piece of the franchise that I liked a lot was the Junior High spinoff. The Levi prequel was surprisingly good for the most part as well. If you don’t mind a whole lot of violence, then I actually would recommend this title since that is mostly what deters me from it. The other aspects are mostly pretty solid. That being said, for a similar experience of top notch quality, check out the first arc of Sword Art Online.

Overall 4/10

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

Fate/Zero Review

Posted on September 15, 2014 by dreager1

The Fate franchise has always been one of the more intense series. Fate Stay Night is probably the only anime that I’ve seen that I would consider to be part horror. (Mostly action) Now, a case can be made that it doesn’t deserve to be called a horror and that I should count Serial Experiments Lain as a horror as well. Both are compelling arguments and they would be interesting to debate, but Fate Stay Night wasn’t your average tournament series. Fate/Zero is known as the superior prequel that shatters Fate Stay Night in every way. Fate/Zero did have some strong points, but I would say that they ended up getting a little too extreme in their quest to be the grittiest mainstream anime. Want a series that’s darker and more filled with despair than Attack on Titan? You’ve come to the right place!

I can confirm that this won’t exactly be the most positive anime review that I’ve done in a while so the fans who think of Fate/Zero as the greatest anime of all time (Or one of them) may want to brace themselves. Instead of dividing this review up into all of the goods and then all of the negatives, I’ll try to spread it around a bit so that the review doesn’t completely tilt to one side to soon. First off, let’s look at the plot.

Naturally, Fate/Zero is a pretty complex anime so this is just a summarization for the overall plot. I’ll get into the character motivations in their individual sections. There is an item by the name of the Holy Grail and once every 20 years it appears to grant the winner of the Fate tournament. 6 candidates are chosen and 6 servants are summoned. Everyone gets a partner and the matchup is based off of a person’s true feelings. The Saber class is supposed to be the strongest, but each of them have their own pros and cons. Will the Grail be used for good or for evil? Nothing is black and white in this show of course, but you will likely figure out who you aren’t supposed to root for. (Caster) Let the games begin!

Now, I could have talked about more of the rules and such, but there are a bunch of them. The important thing to know is that you must destroy the other servants to win and get the human masters to abandon their command seals. If they don’t want too, then you have to take them out as well. The winner gets to make his wish on the Holy Grail and that’s how the tournament works. A church is also there to make sure that everyone is following the rules and not allowing civilians to find out about this secret tournament. (Although the humans wouldn’t be able to do all that much about it) Since the human masters may be a little outmatched if they are bi themselves or something, you are allowed to use one of three command seals to command your servant to appear at your side or for any other order that you need to win the tournament. (Although, some of the masters can fight) This show has a huge cast so let’s discuss some of them.

Saber isn’t the main character, but she’s easily the most iconic figure in the franchise. It’s easy to see why since her design really stands out and her drawing Excalibur is probably the best poster for the show. She wants to win the Holy Grail for her own purposes, which aren’t really stated very clearly here because she has no real reason to trust the humans all that much. We really see her goals in the Fate Stay Night show where she finally begins to trust the humans. We can’t blame her though because every time she tries to trust someone..it backfires. Her master is Kiritsugu after all and he backstabs people for a living. Saber’s ideals clash with the other 2 great kings and it makes for some pretty interesting dialogues that I will mention later on. Saber’s a very good character and she’s easily the most heroic from all of the characters. (Most of the characters in this series don’t really possess that quality)

Unfortunately, I do have one big problem with Saber. She is of the Saber class so she is supposed to easily be the strongest servant in the entire tournament, but she never shows this. We saw how often she lost in the Fate Stay Night anime, but I somehow figured that she would look a lot better in this show. She loses more times than she wins and she’s always on the defensive. She easily crushes one Rider in their spar, but she doesn’t look good against Lancer, (X2-3) Caster, Archer, Berserker, etc. It’s okay if she isn’t the strongest, but she should definitely not be one of the weakest. Only Assassin appears to be weaker than her and that’s not really how this is supposed to work out. She’s almost a parody of the main fighter in that respect, but at least she keeps her ideals throughout the tournament. Her disdain for Kiritsugu is appreciated and it’s too bad that she needs to win the Grail so badly or she could have tried to betray him so that she could save more lives. In the end, Saber is easily the best hero in the show and she deserves to be remembered as the most popular character from the Fate franchise. I just wish that she could get some kind of power up.

Kiritsugu is the main character and he’s easily one of the worst ones that I’ve seen in a while. To start with, I don’t consider him to be a hero in the slightest. You know the kind of villains who believe that they are bringing harmony to the world and that they’re the true heroes? That’s the best way to describe Kiritsugu. All that he does is to “save the world” and he really believes in his conviction. Whether that makes him more sympathetic or even more despicable is up to you, but it didn’t do any wonders for me. I consider him to be one of the big villains and at least Fate/Zero doesn’t try too hard to convince us otherwise. Other shoes would really force us to see a heroic side of him, but Fate/Zero loves showing us the gray areas, which turned out to be good in this case. There wasn’t almost anything that would help me change my opinion of him. It’s a case of “The more information that you know, the more that you are responsible” Kiritsugu knows about all of the other competitors and you have to wonder just how much he knows. If he knows about what is happening to Sakura and the other people in the Matos then he is pretty guilty for not stepping in to help. When he finds out that Caster is a mass murdering child killer, he decides not to help since a few (dozens) of kids aren’t worth his time since he has the world to save. Sacrifice the few (Thousands) to save the many. (What’s left of the 6 billion) That’s his basic philosophy and it’s why I could never see him in a heroic light. Almost every other main character learns that this isn’t the case and they try to save everyone that they can. Ichigo showed this in one of the first episodes of the Bleach series after all!

It got worse for Kitisugu when we saw his sob story. We all know that I can’t stand zombies right? Well, his story involves zombies as the girl that he liked ate from the forbidden magical plant thing and infected the whole village. Kiritsugu found out that his father meant for this to happen to he murders him. (I forgot if “our hero” murdered the girl as well or not, but I mostly tried to forget about these flashbacks) Next up, Kiritsugu and his newfound mentor went around the world to destroy people for money and that sort of thing. After years of becoming close and finally developing a bond, Kiritsugu sucker killed his mentor (Who was 100X more likable than Kiritsugu) from behind. In one of the few scenes where the show tries to get us to sympathize with him, he pulls off a Superman (Man of Steel post Zod) yell to show us how much he didn’t want to do it, but he had to do it to save the people at the airport.

Don’t worry, it’s not over! Kiritsugu threatens one of the masters to force his servant to commit suicide or he will destroy the guy’s fiancé. The guy naturally orders his servant to do this since he wants his fiancé to stay alive, but Kiritsugu basically just grins as his minion murders both the wife and the master. So much for heroic honor and decency right? The fiancé wasn’t innocent, but Kiritsugu didn’t know that so he basically just murdered someone who was only mildly assisting in the battle. Anything to achieve his goals! The very end presents us with another scene that is very Kiritsuguish. The Grail reminds him that it’s been suckering the mere mortals for years and he shows Kiritsugu just how evil his wish is. Kiritsugu responds my murdering his wife and kid in the dream world to show the Grail that he was not going to use his wish anymore. There are dozens of other ways that Kiritsugu could have refused the Grail without doing something so extreme. A simple..”I wish for ___” would have used up his wish and everything would have been okay, but he decided to destroy them for no real reason.

I could go on and on about Kiritsugu for quite a while and you can tell that I really didn’t like his character. He does get a lot of hype about what a great strategist he is though and it’s true that he’s very formidable. He has spells that allow him to speed up his movements by 2-4 times as well as slow them down and he has a gun that disrupts magic. He’s tough to be sure, but he has absolutely no honor and he’s about as deluded as your average villain like Creed or anyone else who thinks that they are the true heroes. It’s safe to say that he also dragged the show down since he’s the main character and you are supposed to root for him. After all, if he’s the most heroic..what does that say about the others!?

Natalia is an assassin from Kiritsugu’s origin story. She’s pretty likable and she’s definitely not a hero, but she’s one of the few villains/anti heroes that you can possible root for. She’s basically a gun for hire so it’s safe to say that she’s more of a villain since she is likely taking people down on both sides. However, she does seem to have some morals about her so she hasn’t hit rock bottom yet. She had started to bond with Kiritsugu and she did a good job while aboard the plane. Unfortunately, you can’t last for too long when your partner is a Benedict Arnold. (She doesn’t really blame him for her untimely end since it helps to save some lives, but it’s definitely a stretch)

I really think that shooting down Natalia’s plane wasn’t the only way to save everyone. It’s sketchy since the cops would complicate things and the zombies would certainly move out very quickly, but the damage would likely be contained. Natalia would run out guns blazing and I’m sure that she could prevent people from entering the plane long enough for the heroes to blow it up. Kiritsugu’s solution just seemed rather drastic.

Rider is pretty unique since he’s the only servant who’s really having a good time during the tournament. He tries to end things diplomatically before going into battle, but this never works since it would be under the condition that the opponent ends up serving him. Rider seems to be a benevolent king, but the other servants are figures of notable skill and reputation so it is out of the question to serve another. I disagree with Rider’s condescending attitude towards Saber (especially since he is constantly outmatched) and he can be a little too casual at times. He should have had more of a sense of urgency during the whole Caster debacle. Nontheless, he is better than some of the other servants and he was not a bad character. His scenes with Waver were a nice distraction from the more serious plots at times. His goal upon acquiring the Holy Grail is certainly not as intense as the other fighters.

Gilgamesh was one of my favorite characters from Fate Stay Night. His character arc went down towards the end since he was way too obsessed with Saber, but he isn’t like that here. This is Gilgamesh at his finest and he was my second favorite character of the series! He has an air of arrogance about him and it is very befitting for a king. He is the King of Heroes and he is shown to be on a different league from the others. The only servant who seems to be a match for him is Berserker since Gilgamesh is able to take on Saber and Rider with no effort whatsoever. His Noble Phantasm is possibly the deadliest one in existence since he can summon an infinite amount of weapons to strike his opponents down. Gilgamesh also has a cool spaceship, which resulted in the best fight scene in the series.

Gilgamesh feels so superior to the other fighters that he doesn’t want them to even look at him without permission. He always treats the rest of the cast as if they are his slaves and they typically humor him. (Since they could die if they didn’t) Gilgamesh loves to toy with Kirei and he constantly goads the villain on for the entire series. Gilgamesh is definitely epic and the voice actor did a good job of expressing his smug demeanor. He is easily one of the highlights of the series and every action scene with him tends to be epic.

Lancer is one of the better servants and he was in the runnings for best hero during the show. Saber eventually increased the lead between them though and it was partially due to Lancer’s ending. It wasn’t quite as disheartening as Berserker’s, but it didn’t really help him a whole lot. Blaming Saber for the events that unfolded didn’t make a whole lot of sense and he should have noticed that she was pretty surprised as well. Aside from that, he was definitely pretty great. We finally have another character who believes in honor and chivalry. His twin staff style definitely gave Lancer the edge over Saber and he proves to be a very tough fighter throughout. I don’t think he would have really been able to match Gilgamesh or Berserker, but it would have been nice to see such a fight.

Kirei is the main villain of Fate/Zero. The anime makes sure to give most of the characters a lot of screentime, but I would say that he is the big villain since he is Kiritsugu’s rival. He wants to find out what his purpose in life is and Gilgamesh tries to help him find a negative answer. Kirei joins the tournament with the weakest servant of the group, (Assassin) but he gets a lot of them to help even the odds. The show tries to develop a contrast between him and Kiritsugu. They are similar in several aspects, but Kiritsugu is at least trying to go towards the heroic side of things while Kirei continues to seep into the darkness. He was intriguing in Fate Stay Night since he turned evil out of nowhere and he was actually pretty tough. In terms of combat ability, Kirei is a lot more impressive in this show. I don’t know how a human could be so powerful, but he really slices through his opponents. He never gets to fight one of the Servants, but that would have been one sided in the other direction. Kirei’s character development is really to show us the dark side of humanity and he’s completely evil by the end although it’s implied that he was always evil and didn’t know it. He was definitely a more interesting villain than the others and I didn’t really mind him for most of the first half. After that, I think he overdoes it in his attempt to understand Kiritsugu and he drops, but he is still an improvement over most of the other antagonists.

Assassin is one of the worst servants. He’s not a bad character, but there’s just no point to him. Even referring to Assassin as “he” is incorrect since there are dozens of them. Thing is..they’re so weak that it takes a large number of them to challenge a single servant. Rider takes out a bunch of them without effort, which wasn’t a great showing for those stealth warriors. Assassin’s role is also very small and you can refer to them as throwaway characters. If they even had a Noble Phantasm, I forgot what it was. (They have no real goal upon acquiring the Holy Grail either…or at least it was never mentioned)

Rin was one of the better characters in Fate Stay Night and she’s also pretty good in this series as well. She gets a whole episode to herself where she gets to save the day and put a dent in Ryonosuke’s plan. That in itself helps her character a lot, but she was already cool. It’s good to have another hero on board and she would have been a great main character. She jumps into the fray to save her friend and you must keep in mind that she’s still pretty young. True heroes start early and at least Rin doesn’t have to go through some of the hardships that the others try to survive. (Although, her ending is also pretty sad in a different way) Unfortunately, she never finds out the truth about what happened to her father so she gets tricked on that part for the rest of her life. (Although she may suspect at the end of Fate Stay Night…hopefully)

Irisviel is Kiritsugu’s partner and she publicly acts as Saber’s master to draw attention away from our fearless main character. She is in charge of meeting up with the enemies and being the target while Kiritsugu is away. Arguably, she could be in a safer position since she is with Saber, but I would argue that Kiritsugu’s job is easier at times. She is a pretty good character and she holds on to her convictions to the very end. It’s unfortunate that she was paired up with Kiritsugu since she really could have done some more good in the world. Since she is with Kiritsugu and Irisviel is such a nice person, she decides to believe in his ideals until the bitter end. She is pretty brave amidst the war and she was definitely a good character.

Illyasviel is the daughter of Irisviel and she’s a pretty nice kid. Her fate isn’t quite as bad as Irisviel’s or Sakura’s, but she is forced to have some pretty bad nightmares since she is the next in line to be the vessel for the Holy Grail. I’m not sure if she will have to end up serving the same role as Irisviel, but I believe that her future may have been averted. I certainly hope so since that would make her ending a lot better. Otherwise, it’s another pretty sad ending since she won’t get to see her parents anymore.

Tohsaka is one of the big shots here since he is one of the favorites to win the tournament. His family has been a key player for generations and his family helped to start this whole competition in the first place. He has already prepared his daughter to win the next Grail War so he can focus on winning this one along with Gilgamesh. He’s a strategist so he never goes out to the front lines with the others. As a result, Tohsaka only gets one real action scene and it barely counts since he’s just blocking the whole time. As expected, he’s not a likable character. Trading away Sakura so that he could have two chances to win the tournament is pretty awful and his nice scenes with Rin just seem phoney. They’re real since he really believes that winning is everything so he treasures Rin as his successor, but it doesn’t make him any more likable. Rin was in trouble during her episode and Yohsaka never even found out about this. His minions also make a lot of plans and have suspicious meetings behind Tohsaka’s back. He needs to be a little more aware of what is happening to him. He talks a pretty good game, but he’s just another “elite” who believes that he is superior to everyone else.

Waver is the master of Rider and he is probably the only “normal” one in the group. He’s just a kid who loves to study, but he doesn’t like that nobody will take him seriously as a magician. It’s because his family line has only been around for a few hundred years and Waver enters the Grail War so that people can respect him. It’s not a very grand wish and he is mocked for it. He’s a pretty decent character for most of the series, but one of his first scenes involves him murdering some animals for the ceremony. It’s really hard to bounce back from something like that and I can’t say that he ever did. He gets a whole lot of development in the show though. Waver realizes what true courage is and he decides to start living a little more. He’ll continue to study and all, but Rider has shown him Earth in a whole new light. Why is Rider essentially the only character to get a happy ending in the show? Maybe it’s because he almost could have been The main character in almost any other show. Still, I can’t say that I really cared for him.

Maiya is a major supporting character in this show as she helps Kiritsugu take out their opponents. She is only a human who has some decent hand to hand skills and a gun, but she does give Kiritsugu a lot of help. It helps that most of the opponents aren’t really prepared to deal with someone else and they just don’t see her as a threat. Of course, it is safe to assume that it’ll be tough for her to live through the entire series. She wasn’t a bad character, although she ultimately didn’t seem to have much of a presence in the series. She gets a handful of action scenes, but that’s about it. She does help Kiritsugu take out two unarmed masters, but she never claimed to be a hero. She just follows his orders for better or worse. (They briefly hint at her origin, but it’s only a passing line or two)

Kariya is the master of Berserker and he’s another guy who gets a pretty tragic origin. To save Sakura from her cruel fate, he enters the Grail Wars. He allows himself to go with the worms in order to get some more power to win the tournament at the cost of his mind. The worms slowly deteriorate him and he has no chance of living past the month/months. His body just won’t last and his mind may go first. It’s really too bad since he was actually a very nice person at the start of the show. He really didn’t want to enter the tournament, but he did it to save Sakura. He should have just tried to break in with some weapons to save Sakura since it would have been a lot less painful, but the odds of success would likely have not been very high. He eventually becomes pretty insane and he deteriorates rapidly. He has a pretty bad scene where he really shows how evil he has become in a church. He tries to go back to how he was later on, but it’s really too late at that point.

It’s time for one of the candidates for worst character of the series! Ryunosuke gets an elite voice actor in the english dub, but that can’t even come close to saving such a terrible character. He’s a mass murderer who typically aims at kids and he really just loves pain and anything that is sadistic. He’s basically a sadist in every meaning of the term and there’s nothing good about him. He totally lives for evil and he’s the kind of guy who would look up to Hitler. He’s fully embraced every sin of the world and he has the gall to talk about how God enjoys his actions. It’s rather painful to listen to this guy speak and he gets way too much screentime as it is. I can’t believe he lasted so long and it’s frustrating to see the heroes just let him be. (At least Saber tries to stop him as soon as possible, while Kiritsugu plays the villain and decides that it’s not worth it) Ryunosuke is another character who lives to drive this anime down the ranks.

Kayneth is the master of Lancer and he doesn’t get a whole lot of character development compared to the others. He wants the Holy Grail, but his goal seems to be rather petty and he’s not a great strategist. He’s proud of his magical upbringing and he’s confident about his chances in the tournament. Unfortunately for him, he’s not a great judge of character and his partner isn’t someone who should really be trusted. He is forced to make a tough choice at the end and both answers led to a negative outcome anyway so it’s rough to be him. He was really unlikable anyway so he’s just a character who was doomed from the start. He’s nowhere near as bad as the characters above and below him, (In the review) but he’s still not a solid addition to the show. It’s too bad since Lancer was actually pretty good.

If you thought Ryunosuke was bad, it’s time for another evil being. Zoken Mato is one of the big players in the magic world and he’s in charge of the worms that exist to destroy this series. He wants to win the Grail during his lifetime so he trains the next successor (Sakura) from very young as he makes a deal to adopt her. Then, he basically throws her to the worms and permanently wrecks her life. He never even gets to die in this series although I’ll assume that someone destroyed him off screen. He’s just terrible and every scene with him is a very bad one.

Sola (Really long name so I’m just abbreviating it here) was Kayneth’s partner and she’s a pretty despicable character as well. She loves to hit people when they’re down and she’ll betray anyone at the drop of a hat. She has no real reason to get the Holy Grail and she’s likely just doing it for status and wealth. She’s just another unlikable character to add to the pile and she doesn’t get any good moments. The only interesting mystery involving her is why Kayneth would ever pick her as a partner. Whatever he saw in her must have been seen when he was barely conscious since she was a bad apple from the start.

Sakura easily has the worst fate from all of the characters in the series and it’s one of those fates that is so tragic that it drags the whole show score down. The instant that this occurred (in the first episode of the series) I knew that the series wasn’t going to be as good as Fate Stay Night. It was really the beginning of its ultimate demise and I’ll get into the “worms” negative a little as the review goes on. Sakura’s story is one of hopelessness where she is powerless to alter her fate. It’s the worst kind of fate because nobody can save her since they don’t know her plight and she can’t do anything about it. It’s one of the ways that Fate/Zero can achieve the dark tone that it was aiming for. Sakura is just a little girl so there’s nothing bad with her character and it’s pretty tough to watch. Fans of her definitely won’t appreciate this turn of events.

Now, it’s time for my favorite character in the franchise! Berserker is way better than his Fate Stay Night version and it’s enough for me to overlook the CGI in his design. Picture Dark Samus or Bass EXE. Berserker is basically an embodiment of darkness and rage as his fury has consumed him. He only lives to fight and destroy at this point, which also results in his fearless nature. He takes on several of the servants at once and he looks very impressive in the process. He is the only character who is actually able to not only damage Gilgamesh, but score a “win.” (It’s highly debatable, but he essentially claimed victory in one of their rounds) That’s a feat in itself and Berserker is just awesome. He doesn’t need to talk and he shows that a cool design mixed in with great action scenes can really help a character.

Now, his ending could have potentially dropped him a whole lot, but I tend to block it out. His final appearance really nerfed his character so that Saber could have one more victory before the series was over and we got an unnecessary plot twist about Berserker. It came out of left field and it didn’t help his character. Luckily, it’s a small scene and I can’t let it wreck such an intense villain! This guy’s still a highlight and he continues to gain strength in all of his appearances until the final one. This guy is great!

Oh no….it’s now time for one of the worst characters in the series! In most anime, this character would be the very worst by a clear margin and the fact that he competes with some of the others is pretty scary. I’m talking about Caster and he has no redeemable qualities. He is another character who is pure evil and he lives to destroy as many kids and people as he can. He lives for fear and the opportunity to deliver pain. He is also completely insane and he seems to be living in a delusion as he mistakes Saber for someone that he probably never even knew. Every scene with Caster is cringe worthy and he’s the kind of character who can wreck an entire episode with his presence. It’s hard to even talk about this guy without being saddened at the prospect of the show without him and some of the other cheap characters. This guy is as third rate as you can get and you can expect him to fight on this site at some point. Needless to say, I haven’t met many characters who are quite as despicable as Caster.

Okay, we’ve gone through all of the major characters. Some of them were negative influences on the show, others were positive ones, and others were so bad that I can barely believe that any writers/producers would want to add them in. (It goes back to the novels first I suppose) One of them is bad enough, but having up to 5 characters who are some of the worst in existence? Now that’s definitely excessive! For a change of pace, let’s talk about an area that was completely positive. I’m referring to the animation! I like googling searches along the lines of “Best animation in an anime” to see what pops up. Fate/Zero is a show that pops up on just about every list along with other big titles like Evangelion. Typically, there are always a few that I don’t recognize and I’ve never seen Megaman or DBZ make the cut. That’s too bad, but they can’t all make it. Is this the best animation in a show? Well, that’s always extremely tough to say since there are many great anime, but I will say that the animation was excellent. This is the kind of show that will still look great 20 years from now and it’ll likely still pick apart other shows from the future eras. The character designs are all streamlined and it would be tough to find an episode where the quality really deteriorated. I would argue that the first half of the show had a higher budget than the second, but it’s tough since it really depends on the episode. Everything about the animation is great and it really shines during night scenes. (Not coincidentally, all of the best animated moments take place at night.)

While I’m not sure about the best animation of all time, I do think the show has the best animated fight of all time. That would be Gilgamesh vs Berserker when they fought in the hi tech planes. It was awesome for many reasons and one of which is the fact that it was totally unexpected. It transformed from a very grounded (No aliens anyway) show about planet busting servants to one where spaceships could actually be used in the fight. The fight was really great and it helps that Gilgamesh and Berserker are my two favorite characters in the series. It’s one of those fights that you can’t really appreciate until you watch it in its entirety and it was the high point of the series. This was also the point where the government got involved to fight and show the world just how tough they could be. The music really complimented this scene as well since the opera theme came up and it’s my favorite theme in this show. It was a battle of titans!

The show had some other pretty great fights as well. Berserker vs Saber and Gilgamesh in round one was pretty great. It was epic for other reasons that I will go into in a second, but the actual fight was fun. Berserker was really the underdog throughout the whole series so it was always good to see him show everyone up. Finally, Saber’s battles against Lancer were great since they were the only really intense blade battles that we got. (Berserker had a brief scuffle as well) Those battles likely had the biggest budget in the series. Every swing was powerful and the colors that emanated from their blows looked very nice as they clashed. Blue and red are colors that naturally compliment each other and the fights did a good job of showing this. The choreography was great as well and the fight felt very real. They were easily some of the best fights out there.

I mentioned that the best fight in the series was the aerial battle, but what was the best moment? I did mention that the fight was the highlight of the series and I stick by that, but this moment was even more influential and it’s the type of scene that really gives you the chills. Remember when the main 3 Avengers first met or any other big group scene like Naruto facing off with everyone at the Chunin Exams? This is that kind of scene as everyone meets up at the docks for the first time. It was the first time that we got to see all of the servants (Minus Assassin since he was busy hiding and getting destroyed and minus Caster since he’s a cheap character) converge at one location. It was really the only time as well that they all got to talk and discuss matters. It was a very interesting moment and it played to the strengths of Fate/Zero. Fate/Zero spent a huge amount of time developing the characters so this is the kind of scene that really benefits from that. It’s definitely a moment that I won’t forget and it was awesome. We’ve never really seen a scene quite like that one or at least not on this scale. It’ll be nice to see if another show can ever top such a gathering of intriguing individuals in such an explosive setting.

Gilgamesh, Rider, and Saber have their own beliefs on what a true king should be like. Gilgamesh believes that he ruler over everything on the planet and his vassals should be happy just to serve him. He seems to actually be a very benevolent ruler and he treats the servants well as long as they remember who is on top. Crossing him would mean your demise. Rider believes in ruling over the servants, but letting them share in the pleasures of life. His dream becomes theirs and they don’t fear him. His underlings actually look up to him and they are glad to die during the journey if it will help him. Saber believes that a King’s path is a solitary one and it’s up to her to destroy all of the enemies in her path so that the Kingdom will be saved. She never developed a bond with any of her underlings so they were safe, but they didn’t really know their King. Which version is correct? Well, I wouldn’t say that any of them are downright bad, but I did find myself on Saber’s side the most while agreeing with Gilgamesh a little. Rider’s ideal isn’t bad, but not terribly realistic. When it works, it ends up being great for everyone since it’s good to be enthusiastic. Ultimately, I would be on Saber’s side since I agree with her that the King should be the one eliminating all of the opponents in the way of the Kingdom. She didn’t develop any bonds with her kingdom’s inhabitants, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. She didn’t seem distant in the flashbacks and it’s more that she just didn’t understand what they were thinking. I wouldn’t say that it was her fault and she was easily the most just of the three Kings. Everything she did, she did for the Kingdom and they just couldn’t accept it in the end. I don’t place any of the blame on her and her ideals are sound.

One of the biggest negatives in the show is the mere existence of the worms. They are mentioned in the first episode and it’s where we find out Sakura’s tragic history. They also come into play for Kariya’s subplot and they last throughout the whole series. They aren’t a big factor in the show, but once we know why they are there and what they are doing to Kariya and Sakura, it’s just a huge negative. You can’t help but be reminded of it whenever those characters appear as well as Zoken. It really crosses the line of how dark a show should be, but Fate/Zero does that a whole lot.

Fate/Zero’s soundtrack is pretty good. It’s nowhere near as memorable as Fate Stay Night’s, but it tends to fit the scene. Unfortunately, it’s pretty forgettable in retrospect, but I won’t be forgetting the main opera battle theme anytime soon. That was perfect for the fight scenes and it made each moment even more epic than it would have been without the music. The openings are decent I suppose, but I can’t say that I cared for them all that much. At least, they really couldn’t stand up to Fate Stay Night’s second opening and both of Fate/Zero’s focused too much on showing all of the characters so we didn’t get as much action as we could have gotten. The second opening is also surprisingly soft considering that this is where most of the action should be. (Although it is actually fitting in that regard)

A noticeable weakness for Fate/Zero is that there is a significant lack of action in the final half of the show. After the fight against Caster, there is a short bout between Saber and Lancer. We don’t really get a real fight again until one of the final episodes where Saber challenges Berserker and Kiritsugu fights Kirei. That’s pretty unacceptable since this is a span of 13 episodes. There are other action scenes, but they’re all just very short. Gilgamesh’s hyped battle against Rider is supremely underwhelming since no hand to hand blows are struck at all. It can barely be called a fight since Gilgamesh doesn’t even need to move and the fight barely lasts for 2-3 minutes. It really can’t be called a fight since it was such a blowout. Gilgamesh vs Saber? That fight lasts for about 5 seconds and I also wouldn’t call it a fight. It’s just surprising that the action died down as it ended.

From those two fights, only Kiritsugu’s match was actually a lot of fun. Saber’s battle against Berserker was much worse than the first round and it’s because Berserker decides to use a gun this time. Bullets/Energy Pellets don’t work on any decent fighter and it’s not quite as exciting to see Saber just running around to dodge the attacks. Berserker does take out his sword, but then he looks very weak while using it. I still cannot forget how weak the writers made him look in that battle so that Saber could take the win. I forgot to mention it earlier in the fights section so I will say that Kiritsugu’s action scenes were pretty good. His fight against Kirei is definitely interesting since it’s pretty strategic.

Now, I do have to wonder how Kirei put up such a good fight. He’s still a human right so how is he moving so fast? Kiritsugu speeds up his movements by 4X and Kirei is still a lot faster than him. I’m assuming that Kirei must be using some kind of spell, but it’s never stated. Nevertheless, the fight was pretty great and the animation was really good as well. I guess you can say that this battle was the true series finale clash and it was a solid way to end things. Kirei’s short battle against Kayneth was also good for most of the same reasons as the Kirei fight. I may not like Kiritsugu at all, but his action scenes were very interesting.

It’s time for a comparison paragraph for Fate Stay Night and Fate/Zero. It’s a bit of a blowout overall, but it looks a little more even on paper even though Fate Stay Night wins many of the big battles. Fate/Zero has the better animation and it makes the universe a little more interesting than Fate Stay Night. Berserker, Gilgamesh, Rider, and Saber (The way that she speaks is just so much more eloquent in this version and I love the polite pretenses that she and Lancer put up when they are bantering) were improvements over their FSN counterparts as well. However, Fate Stay Night’s Assassin, Caster, Rin, and main character (Shirou) beat the FZ versions. FSN had a better soundtrack and it managed to avoid most of the negatives of FZ. FSN had a little more fanservice than FZ, but it was still very minimal. FSN did a better job of making the ending exciting, but FZ did have the edge for animation. FSN did a good job of achieving a dark tone atmosphereically through the backgrounds and how it was animated without having to resort to dark content to make it dark like FZ. There are definitely points that could be darker if they were totally shown, but FSN knew when it was time to make those moments appear off screen. That’s something that could have benefited FZ a lot. It may sound pretty equal from here, but the lack of negatives is the critical part. I have already touched on some of FZ’s negatives and FSN didn’t really have a problem with them. Of course, you can check out my review for it to really get the full story.

One of the major negatives is that I wasn’t able to really enjoy almost any of the episodes because just about every one of them would have a big downer. A scene or multiple scenes that would really just wreck the episode because of how sadistic or unnecessarily violent they were. It’s because we had so many terrible characters like Caster and Zoken. They are characters that are so bad that they guaranteed that the show would get a 5 or less and they could spoil an episode. Likewise with the Worms, who just added onto the pile. Fate/Zero did everything in the darkest/most violent way that it could in just about every situation. The show had very few happy moments and that’s never a good thing. Having a serious tone can be a nice change of pace and it can make some scenes more exciting, but you still need to be enjoyable. Ultimately, shows are supposed to be pretty fun/enjoyable and while the fights were great, they aren’t enough to save a show where so many negative events happen. Also, if you thought Attack on Titan was intensely violent, I dare say that Fate/Zero matches it if not exceeding AOT.

For the death scenes, it would always happen in very unpleasant ways. When Kirei takes out Irisviel, he does it in a very painful way that is rather unnecessary. Her first defeat isn’t any better. The fact that we have to watch Caster perform so many sinister acts is another strike against the show and the list goes on and on. Fate/Zero seemed to really want to be the darkest/most violent series that it could be while still being mainstream enough to also have a lot of shonen action scenes. I have seen it labeled as one of the greatest anime of all time so it appears that this approach worked, (It did for Attack on Titan I suppose) but it’s also what doomed it for me. We are used to having many characters experience traumatic origins and upbringings, but Fate/Zero loves to take it a step further. It just goes way too far on all accounts.

Overall, Fate/Zero is definitely nowhere near Fate Stay Night in quality. It barely scores a 3 to be honest. The animation is undoubtedly some of the greatest that I’ve seen and the soundtrack was solid. The fight scenes were good and the show did a good job of fleshing out the characters and giving us a lot of interesting plot points. The problem is that these positives are completely overwhelmed by the onslaught of negatives. You could really make a case for a 2 or a 1 here. I still find the Fate franchise very interesting and I do like Fate Stay Night a lot, but this was just a really poor way to make a prequel. All of the reasons above are why I would never recommend it to anyone and I would strongly recommend staying away from it. The sheer amount of content and violence make it unsuitable for any audience. It’s really regrettable because this is a show that really could have been good. Take away Caster, Ryunosuke, Zoken, The Worms/Sakura’s plight, Kariya’s meltdown, Waver’s unnecessary animal violence, and get rid of some of the excessive violence, and this could have been a 7-8/10 show. The show’s positive elements would have really been able to shine and it definitely had the elements needed to challenge the big guns in the anime world. Alas, this is a ship that has sailed and I can only hope that the new remake of Fate Stay Night doesn’t lean towards Fate/Zero’s style or that it only captures its positive attributes. The Fate franchise still has a lot of potential and it’s a great universe that can continue to expand. Even if they only stick to the two Grail Wars, there are a lot of different ways that they can handle the event. As long as they don’t resort to such extremes like in this series, the Fate franchise can definitely have a worthy successor that is just as good as the original FSN. In the end, if you want a compelling action series with some horror, just skip this prequel and watch Fate Stay Night.

Overall 3/10

Tsubasa Spring Thunder Review

Posted on September 11, 2014 by dreager1

It’s time to review the second Tsubasa OVA, which is also the final one to ever be created. For better or worse, the franchise ended (On TV anyway) with this installment so does it provide us with a lot of closure and such? No….not quite. Luckily, this turns out well for us in the sense that it is basically nonstop action. This OVA raises the stakes from the last one and we have less exposition so more time for fights. As you can tell, this one easily defeated the last OVA!

The plot continues after the heroes saved Fai from the sorcerer….is that really how the last OVA ended? Wellllll…maybe not, but they assume that you guys read the manga so it’s okay to jump a lot! Kurogane loses his arm and someone goes to get him a replacement when an old foe appears. Remember Seishiro, Syaoran’s mentor? Well, he’s back to keep on searching for the vampire twins and he also decides to intimidate the heroes as a consolation prize. Syaoran isn’t having any of that and he attack the man. He shall get the feather at any cost! Unbeknownst to the heroes..the other Syaoran also approaches! (The original Syaoran who was with us for the whole series before turning evil…that Syaoran)

Now, this OVA can be a little cruel to longtime fans of the series who didn’t read the manga since it skips a whole bunch of story arcs while including flashbacks that reference them. It’s an intriguing strategy and one that many will not really appreciate. It’s probably a lot more fun if you’ve never seen Tsubasa before since it’ll be a mystery. (I said something similar for the last OVA) Starting off with the heroes escaping from a dying world after murdering the magician who had been hyped as one of the ultimate villains since the very first episode is rather anticlimatic as well. I’d be pretty disheartened if Frieza or Aizen had been taken out off screen like that. We also don’t really hear the plot twist about Fai’s name. (Tsubasa loves its name twists…..just wait for Kurogane’s!)

So, the continuity of this OVA is definitely a little dicey, but if you read the manga everything will still make a lot of sense. At first, I was pretty skeptical about Kurogane losing his arm since it seemed to be counterproductive at the time. It would just reduce his chances of escape right? Luckily, we just find out that he had to sacrifice his arm to save Fai and escape. (Fai’s always getting rescued now and that’s a trend that won’t end anytime soon) Tsubasa saved itself from that small stumble.

This OVA is only two episodes so it’s extremely short. Luckily, it tries to make up for this with all of the action and its a winning strategy. The first episode mainly deals with Syaoran’s fight against Seishiro and it’s nice to see how Syaoran’s improved since their last encounter. (Different Syaoran, but same fighting techniques) However, Syaoran has not improved nearly as much as you would have thought and he’s still losing pretty badly in this fight. I love his determination, but it’s disappointing to see him so outmatched here. Things get even dicier for him in the second episode since he goes up against Dark Syaoran. (I’m going to just say Dark before his name to make it easier to tell them apart) Dark Syaoran is much stronger than Seishiro in my opinion although I’m sure that many would disagree on that. Syaoran puts up a brave fight, but I seriously don’t see him posing much of a threat for the experienced villain. The fight scene is fun and it’s nice to see the contrast of fire vs thunder.

I definitely enjoyed the action scenes in this OVA more than the last one’s. They weren’t rushing and the fights were allowed to really develop. The energy attacks from Seishiro’s blade as well as the two Syaorans also helped since energy attacks tend to look pretty great when they’re used in such a high budget OVA. One area where this OVA lost to the last one is the theme song. The last one was lacking in images, but the overall atmosphere helped it and the green circle was ominous. There really isn’t anything redeeming in this opening and it’s just very boring. I don’t know what happened, but it feels like it was created as an afterthought. There’s no action scenes or anything and it just shows all of the characters a bunch of times. Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z has openings over 20 years ago that were better than these. There’s no excuse for a bad opening these days since so many anime produce great ones every year!

Aside from the opening, the soundtrack is pretty good. Naturally, most of the selections are from the show so they are tried and true. They never get old and it’s very well rounded. I’m pretty sure that my favorite theme didn’t play this time, but I suppose that it can’t make the cut every time. (Even though it is the best theme….)

I would almost say that Syaoran is a 5 star protagonist in this OVA. (5 out of 5 of course) However, there is one scene that holds him back and it is near the beginning. Seishiro starts to intimidate the heroes and he beats up on Fai for a while…and nobody helps. This is actually worse for Kurogane (Since he does nothing, but Syaoran should have done something. Syaoran does challenge Seishiro to a match, but it’s only because he wants the feather. He seemed to not care about what was happening to Fai, which was pretty out of character. Aside from that brief moment, Syaoran was basically perfect.

At this point, Sakura is basically avoiding him (As seen in a new flashback) so he is basically alone. He’s still intent on getting the feathers so that Sakura can have her memories back, but he’s going to have the short end of the stick either way. He’s still very resolute in this decision and he’ll face anyone to get the feathers. He never backs down and Syaoran is just a great hero. He’s certainly more heroic than your average fighter and he doesn’t even need any comic relief scenes to balance his personality out. He’s completely serious and stone faced the entire OVA and it works for his character.

Dark Syaoran mainly appears for the second episode, but he does get a pretty epic cliffhanger for the first episode. He definitely means business and to be honest…I’m basically rooting for him. I try to root for both Syaorans equally, but Dark Syaoran is technically the character that I’m more used too and if you didn’t see the last OVA, you wouldn’t know just how evil he is. From this perspective, he seems more like an anti-hero, although a strong case can be made that he’s the villain since he’s willing to destroy the other Syaoran. Regardless, his goal is to help Sakura get her feathers back and the main difference is that he doesn’t take no for an answer. His design is epic and you can tell that he’s more on the dark side than the regular Syaoran. Dark Syaoran definitely helped the series excel to new heights!

Sakura is a lot better here than in the last OVA. She is typically awake…well, she’s awake inside of her dream anyway. It’s an interesting moment since she has a meta conversation with Watanuki and it’s all very deep. (Literally since they’re basically underwater) It can be a little upsetting to see her avoid Syaoran, but we do find out the reason for it at the very end and it’s explained more at the end of the manga. It makes sense to an extent since we wouldn’t want Syaoran to get any false hopes. Her final moment is not that great though since it’s something that we’ve seen a lot of characters do in the past and it’s always a clock stopper. (Not in a good way…I want my action scenes to keep on going!) She doesn’t fight in this OVA, but we can always hope that she’ll grab her gun and take on a villain someday.

As mentioned earlier, Kurogane looks really bad here. Not only does he freeze up when Fai is attacked, but he has been reduced to sitting on the sideline for all of the battles. Gone are the days when he was a big fighter. (He does get a big fight soon, but it is not animated at this point in time) He does have some scenes with the princess where we find out new twists and such, but it’s not really going to help him rise up the ranks. I like him as a character, but I just didn’t care for him here. Just counting this OVA and not the previous one + TV show, Kurogane just wouldn’t be that great.

Although, Kurogane would still be better than Fai. Now that Fai is basically powerless, he’s really no help to the team. He tags along and gets beat up by the enemies, but that’s about it. We know that he’s a very good hand to hand fighter from the TV show…unless he was just amping up his abilities with magic. Still, I would expect him to do better and I’m sure that he would have some good moments in the future. This OVA just happens to take place at a time where he doesn’t really have a role to speak of. It’s a sad time for him and Kurogane.

It’s good to see Seishiro appear after being gone for so long. He’s easily one of the best characters in the franchise and his character is still a mystery. He seems to have joined the side of the heroes in this OVA sine he’s a lot friendlier then he once was, but you still have to question his goal. What will he do with the vampires once he finds them? It’s too bad that Seishiro won’t stick around to help since he could definitely do a lot of good. He may be the strongest hero at the moment and that’s saying something! I guess he’ll just have to let the main characters do their thing, but it would have been nice if he had stayed with the party.

The tone of this OVA is a little more like the show. There are still a lot of twists, but it’s a little lighter. The stakes haven’t gone down, but these two episodes feel like they could have been in the animated series. Maybe the director changed or it’s just a coincidence in the story. The Kamui arc was likely darker in the manga as well. This one had more nostalgia for me in that sense and that’s always a nice plus.

The ending may be more than a little dicey for Tsubasa fans and for those who just picked this OVA up on the fly. The ending gives us a huge cliffhanger with the heroes deciding to take out the main villain once and for all as they make another dimension jump. After all of the adventures, we are finally at the final battle! Only to find out that the series was not going to be continued and that you would have to read the manga and try to decipher the fight scenes to see it! On one hand, it’s not cool since you’ll never see the ending, but I do have to admit that I’m a sucker for a good cliffhanger. That type of ending really makes me jump on the hype train! It’s just so intense and it’s one of the ultimate cliffhangers! (Another example of an ultimate cliffhanger is Goku finally arriving to his allies’ aid against Frieza or Sasuke preparing to fight Gaara after some intense training. Shonen Jump is full of these scenes and it’s one of the reasons why they are awesome!)

Overall, Tsubasa definitely ended on a high note with this OVA! It’s a mixed bag since it doesn’t really tie up most of the loose ends and it doesn’t really end, but it was still a very fun ride. We had a lot of action and the soundtrack/animation will hold up very well for many years. Bringing back Seishiro and Dark Syaoran was a good way to bring in most of the villains and Fei Wong got his little cameo. Kurogane and Fai looked really underwhelming and this is their last animated appearance to that could be a little disheartening to their fans. (Not quite as bad as being a fan of the evil sorcerer though…) I definitely recommend this OVA to Tsubasa fans and to anyone who enjoys a nice anime fight! It doesn’t really have any negative qualities and it fixes the mild issues that I had with the first OVA. (I’ll miss the Angelic Layer crossover from the manga, but I suppose that this was how it had to be. Hopefully it’ll get animated someday) This is something that you’ll be glad you saw!

Overall 8/10

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

Fate Stay Night Review

Posted on July 16, 2014 by dreager1

Fate Stay Night is one of those anime that you will likely hear about during your anime adventures. Even if you have no idea what the plot is, it’s just hard not to hear about this title. I’m always up for an action anime and this one involves a tournament so that’s always a good sign. The DVD cover could have been a little more interesting, but we can’t always have an action cover I suppose.

The plot involves Shirou Emiya as he is still haunted by an event 10 years earlier, which burned away a large part of the area nearby. He lived through it and now he likes to help people out whenever he can. He thinks of himself as a hero of justice and he leads a rather ordinary life. He does have some magical abilities as he can reinforce an object to fix it or make it stronger, but that’s about it so he’s not much of a fighter. His life changes when he is selected to participate in the Grail Wars. He ends up summoning a servant by the name of Saber and together they must win or be crushed by their adversaries.

The Grail Wars consist of 7 teams. Each team gets one master and one servant. The master is the human who is selected and the servant is a legendary hero who has been brought into the present to help out. The winning team can have their greatest wish granted by the Grail once all of the other teams have been terminated. Naturally, Shirou wants to win the Grail Wars without destroying anyone. He doesn’t really have a need for the Grail, but he has to win so that a villain does not. A noble goal, but will Saber agree?

There are quite a few references to the previous Grail War throughout the show and it’s basically a subplot since it heavily involves Shirou’s past as well as Saber’s. As expected, the average humans don’t really know about the Grail Wars and are likely convinced that random fires just occur. The police don’t really appear at all and I suppose that they would ultimately be powerless, but you would think that they would make some kind of move after a big event happens at the school. Well, Shirou is the hero anyway to it’s up to him to save the day.

Shirou is the main hero of this story and he’s a decently good main character. He makes his share of mistakes, but his intentions are usually sound. He does want to be a hero so he typically tries to save as many people as possible. He’s at odds with Saber most of the time because of how their battle strategies differ. He would rather fight the enemies on his own so that Saber doesn’t have to get hurt. That’s usually not a viable option so things don’t always turn out well for him. He can be pretty selfish at times since he wants Saber to stay on Earth instead of fulfilling her wish. He ultimately makes the hero move and he doesn’t attempt to force her with a command seal so that’s good. He’s hardly what you’d consider to be a perfect main character, but he gets the job done and he’s pretty determined. He also learns how to fight, which is a major plus.

One thing about Shirou is that he’s not very smart. Usually, the main hero might be unsmart during normal situations and then become a fighting genius like Naruto, Luffy, and Goku. Shirou is like that to an extent, but one can argue that it’s more on Luffy’s level. He knows that he should never go outside without his servant because everyone wants to destroy him, but he loves taking a stroll around town and staying out until after dark. Nobody can attack him if their are witnesses (in theory) so he takes the time to go to school. The problem is that he waits until everyone else leaves because he was walking around in a daze. This leads into trouble of course. Next, Shirou goes to the park during the afternoon, but it’s in a secluded part of the city and nobody’s around….not his best move. Shirou makes these kinds of mistakes often and it can be a little tough to watch since you have to wonder why he would make these mistakes. Once or twice is acceptable, but it constantly happens to him and he definitely doesn’t seem to take the tournament seriously until the second half of the show.

Saber is another one of the main characters and she gets a lot of hype. She’s known as the strongest servant and most of the enemies are supposed to fear her. I have to say that this is one of the problems with her portrayal. She acts as if she’s a very tough fighter and the others acknowledge her to be very powerful. Despite this, she spends a good portion of the series getting knocked out or fainting from fatigue. Her worst battle was when she was losing to a human. He was amped up with magic, but it should be physically impossible for him to defeat Saber.

Now, the main reason that the show gives us for how underpowered she is…is because Shirou isn’t a great master. He doesn’t know how to give Saber any of his mana (energy) and he constantly takes hers away when he gets destroyed and his essence steals her energy to heal himself. That’s fine…..but it’s not great if you’re a Saber fan. Because of this, she’s constantly losing and we can’t even blame Shirou for wanting to keep her out of the fight. He does have a point that she is almost always injured and she can’t even use her ultimate attack without running the risk of dying from the energy drain.

Aside from this, Saber is still a good character. She’s more no nonsense than Shirou and she doesn’t mind slaying her opponents as long as it is done honorably. She wants to win the Grail to fulfill an obligation, which Shirou disapproves of. I also think that the goal isn’t that great. Saber’s invisible sword makes for a good weapon and it reminds me of Creed’s blade. Saber prefers to stay detatched from the situation so that she doesn’t get emotionally invested, but that’s pretty hard to do when you’re responsible for keeping your partner alive through a long tournament. She gets a lot of character development as the series goes on. Luckily, she stays as a good character throughout the show.

Rin is another one of the contestants in the Grail Wars and she’s allied with Archer. Unlike Shirou, Rin has always been aware of the Grail Wars and she’s been preparing for this for a long time. Evidently, she was not preparing for long enough because she ends up getting Archer instead of Saber. She’s disappointed, but she’ll devise a way to make Archer a threat. She uses more strategic means to attack her enemies and she’s willing to destroy anyone in her way.

Rin is also a solid character and without her, Shirou would have been doomed from the start. She can actually fight on her own to an extent since she can fire energy blasts and use her gems to cause powerful explosions. She does make some controversial moves like trying to destroy Shirou to put an end to his misery, but she mostly makes the heroic calls when necessary. Most of what she did at the time was to help Shirou get more ruthless and to take the tournament more seriously, but he wouldn’t have any of that.

Shinji used to be Shirou’s friend although we never really find out how this could have happened. From the beginning, Shinji is portrayed as a bully who is very insecure. He gets rejected two times by the same person, once for more than friends and once to be teammates. He was already corrupted, but this helps him accelerate into madness as he decides to destroy everyone at his school so that he can power up his servant and win the Grail Wars. He has Rider at his side and she’s the weakest servant in the tournament so it’s a little rough for him. That being said, it’s no excuse to turn into the villain and he’s forced to go up against Shirou. Shinji doesn’t have any redeemable qualities even though Shirou acts as if he’s merely made a few mistakes. Shinji started out as an unlikable character and that’s how he ended as well.

Sakura doesn’t get a huge role in the anime and she mostly represents Shirou’s normal life. She helps him out around the house and it seems like they’ve been friends for a while. She’s a nice person, but she’s also a bit of a liability for Shirou since she’ll always be in danger as long as she hangs around him. Naturally, the villains know this as well and Shirou has to go to rescue her. It’s not really her fault that she can’t fight so it’s not a negative of course and she does stand up to Rin when the latter tries to stop her from going to Shirou’s home. (It was for her own good and all….) Sakura’s role is fairly small, but she’s a good supporting character. She doesn’t have any annoying traits like the friends in the average Marvel show….meaning the current Marvel shows of course.

Kirei is the guy who’s in charge of the current Grail War. He’s there to make sure that everyone follows the rules and he seems like a decent person deep down…right? Well, it’s hard not to go any further without obvious spoilers, but he’s definitely not a great character. He believes that the end justifies the means and he basically loses it. He’s certainly not a likable character by the end and he definitely did seem shady from the start. He can put up a decent fight when necessary, but he typically relies on the element of surprise or abilities that happen to be around for him to use.

Taiga is another one of Shirou’s friends and she doesn’t really add much to the show. She’s mainly there to keep the show light and to bring in some comedy once in a while so that the show won’t be too dark. If that’s the reason for her character…then it doesn’t really do a great job. It adds some light scenes, but they aren’t very interesting and Taiga isn’t the greatest character out there. She only has one emotional moment where she tries to get Shinji to sound the alarms….but this is Shinji that we’re talking about. Taiga means well, but she’s a little overdone for comic relief. Also, eating a lot is supposed to be the main character’s job…but his friend’s!

Issei is Shiro’s most minor ally. He only appears when Shiro needs some practical data or to stop Shiro from making the wrong calls. Issei does a decent job on the latter part, but he’s not very subtle about it. He’s a moral person who tries his best to stay to the straight path of being nice, but it’s tough since a villain infiltrates his main group’s building. He’s naturally oblivious to this and he never gets to do anything that is relevant to the plot. I would say that he is my favorite character from Shirou’s friends though. We needed a guy like him to keep Shirou alert.

Illyasviel is another one of the masters and she’s pretty good as well. Her character change is one of the more drastic ones and yet…her personality isn’t really affected. She’s one of the more dangerous opponents because she definitely has no qualms about destroying all of the other combatants. She also doesn’t mind using a sneak attack to put her in a better position to win the Grail. That being said, I was still pretty shocked when she used the paralysis spell in the park. It really came out of nowhere and I had thought that there would be a truce since she had been acting like a friend. Ah well…that’s why you shouldn’t underestimate her! From the humans, I dare say that she’s the best master in the show with Shirou and Rin not being far behind.

Soichiro is the final master and he’s pretty good as well. He’s portrayed as one of those guys who will do anything if it will please his partner. His servant is Caster, but only in technical terms since they fight as if it were the opposite. He doesn’t seem like he was actually a bad guy, but he still is. Essentially, he’ll do whatever Caster tells him to do even if it means sacrificing an innocent person or destroying a student. He’s far more likable than most of the other enemies, but he’s still not someone that you can really root for in the end. I just loved his fight scenes, which helps him rise up in my books. He ended up being a little too overpowered so some help from the plot was in order for his ultimate end.

Lancer really gets the shaft in the show. He appears at the beginning of the series and he’s hinted to be one of the strongest fighters. He gets a hit on Saber and his Noble Phantasm seems to be very lethal. Unfortunately, he manages to vanish until the final pair of episodes where he pops up out of nowhere. Unfortunately, we don’t even get to see him fight as his action scene is off screen. Well…..so much for that. I still do like him and he was one of the best servants in the show. He was an antagonist, but he still had honor and he believes in fighting the right way. It’s too bad that he couldn’t appear more, but his opening fight scene was still fun to watch and I suppose that I’ll just have to make do with it. I have to say that the writers must have forgotten about him during the show.

Archer is easily one of the best characters in the show. His banter with Shirou is always fun to watch and he’s pretty rebellious. He disobeys Rin’s command to help Shirou and he never wants to help out. He only does so to protect Rin and the whole tournament seems beneath him. There was one really out of character scene where Saber defeats him in a single blow, but I think that was really to help the Saber hype. The problem is that he’s out of commission for quite a few episodes and then he just gets one more fight in the series. Ah well, he’s still an epic character to root for and I believe that the voice really helped. It definitely matched his character and the voice actor delivered the lines well. Archer’s Noble Phantasm attack is pretty good since he has a lot of weapons and he can keep on replenishing them. He easily had one of the best fights in the show.

Assassin is the main reason why Archer isn’t my favorite servant. He’s easily the best character in the series and it’s regrettable that he didn’t get a whole lot of screentime. He’s just interested in having a good fight and he gets to pit his skills against Saber’s twice. Those two fights are his only battles in the show, but they’re pretty good and show how powerful he is. He doesn’t have any big attacks and his Noble Phantasm is actually pretty straight forward compared to the others. He really relies on pure swordsmanship and that just shows how skilled he is. Many of the others others would not have been able to manage without some kind of edge. Assassin’s plot twist at the end is pretty sad so you also feel bad for the guy. At least he got to have a little fun before the end.

Gilgamesh appears during the final phase of the anime so he appears very suddenly. He easily has the best entrance in the series. No other character got to appear in such an epic fashion and he instantly proved why he was a cut above the rest. I was actually a decently big fan of him for a while, but his goals start to get more and more iffy as the show goes on. By the end, he’s basically not likable anymore, but he is definitely a powerful villain. He knows how to put up a good fight and his design instantly reminds me of Saint Seiya. This guy definitely has the appearance of a Gold Saint and he has the power to back it up as well. He is one of those characters who is still a little too powerful, but luckily the show manages to find a (semi) believable way of handling him. It was still a little dicey, but definitely more believable than some of the other fights.

Rider seems to be the weakest servant and I can definitely see why. She is not impressive in the slightest and I would definitely say that she’s my least favorite servant. She uses a chain to attack and once she stabs you with it, then it’s hard to break free. She’s very quick, but that basically rounds out her array of abilities so she’s hardly a threat to the other fighters. She actually has multiple battles with Shirou, which is something that could not happen with most of the others. Shirou and Lancer’s battle had an abrupt end and likewise with Shirou’s one second battle against Gilgamesh. Real servants should be able to take down a human in an instant and that didn’t happen with Rider. I definitely couldn’t wait until she was defeated so that we could move on to a more interesting fighter. To her defense, Rider does have an ultimate attack, but it’s more like she’s just using someone who actually has power so it’s barely worth mentioning.

Caster uses magic to fight her battles since she’s not much of a physical fighter. This is pretty unique for a servant so she makes sure to have others do her bidding. She amps up their abilities so I wonder why she cannot do the same thing to herself. Either way, she’s still more than a match for Rider, which is also a little embarrassing for the latter. She had an interesting backstory and one would almost think that she was not completely evil until you remember her present actions. She was much better than Rider, but not nearly as cool as some of the other servants. There just doesn’t seem to be any way to sympathize with her and I have a feeling that getting the grail using a cheap trick like the one that she attempted would backfire in some way.

Berserker is….the strongest servant! Yes, I already said that Saber got all of the hype, but Berserker got all of the feats. Personally, I would choose Assassin to defeat Berserker in a fair fight, but everyone basically starts to admit that he was the best one. (Of course, that’s before Gilgamesh stepped in) He relies on brute strength, but his special ability is formidable since defeating him once is not enough. What makes me skeptical is that he never appears to be very fast. It should be a simple matter for some of the fighters to just keep on outspeeding him until they finally take him down for the count. Berserker has absolutely no character so I can’t say that I’m a fan of him. He’s not really interesting and he’s really just there as an obstacle for the heroes. He’s a legitimate threat as a villain, but he could have been a much better character. (Talking would be a good start)

I have to say that Fate Stay Night is a great anime to watch at night. There’s always some tension in the show and most of the episodes conveniently take place during the night time. Even if it’s day time, it’s always cloudy so the sun never really comes out. You can never let your guard down because everyone is out to destroy Shirou. The series just has a scary vibe to it and it can feel like a horror show at times. Only in the atmosphere luckily as horror doesn’t have the greatest track record in any form of media. It’s definitely a change of pace from the average anime and the darkness isn’t too overblown.

Now, one part of the show that I really didn’t like was when Shirou had to give Saber some of his power. To do this, it involved a CGI dragon which was all right, but the real world things that were happening were pretty awful. It makes Rin and Shirou look terrible as well and I can safely say that it was a sad moment to be a fan of either of them. It’s just one scene and it’s luckily never really mentioned again, but it’s still hard to forget. It’s also hard to call Shirou a hero after that since he was told not to do it by Saber. Shirou just kind of ignored that. I mostly just block the scene out, which is why the sections for Shirou and Rin are still positive. It’s just one of those moments that comes out of nowhere and the writers must have just panicked. It was probably the only really big wince worthy scene in the show.

That being said, the show does unfortunately have some fanservice. Not a whole lot of it luckily, but there are two major scenes with Saber that come to mind. The generic hotsprings/bath scene is in just about everything nowadays and these two are used to show how Saber’s personality has changed from the beginning to the end. There are many better ways that they could have done this. Compared to other shows like Index and Sword Art Online, it’s definitely not bad, but it could be better. If nothing else, Attack on Titan did get one thing right and that was the fact that it basically had no fanservice in the entire show.

Despite the dark tone of the show, Fate Stay Night isn’t really that violent. The only big scene that you would want to be on the lookout for is when Rider first uses her final attack. Using it involves stabbing herself in the neck for whatever reason and we get a big Bleach spray. A few characters basically lose their arm or get critically injured, which looks a little more violent thanks to the really high budget for those scenes (Like Index) but it’s not that bad. If you’ve seen Bleach, then this should be okay and the Rider scene is the only one that you may watch out for. The Church’s underground is one scene that’s pretty disturbing since we see a lot of parts so many people didn’t quite make it. Luckily, they don’t go into detail so I like to think that they met their end quickly.

Luckily, those are only a handful of scenes and they don’t really derail the show. Some parts may be unnecessary, but no show can be truly perfect. (Not even Yugioh GX) I would have liked some more city battles because anime in general seem to avoid them. There is only one of them in the show and that’s when Saber fights Rider on top of a sky scraper. I don’t care for Rider and her battles aren’t the most entertaining, but I did enjoy the setting for the battle and I’ll never get tired of city fights.

The animation for the show was only all right at first. It actually looked a lot older than I had been expecting and the fights with Saber were very stiff. The way that they drew her attire made it look like more of a dress made out of steel than something made for combat. Because of this, she could barely move in the fights. Luckily, the animation got way better for the second half of the show. It’s hard to say when it got better, but definitely after the first fight with Berserker. I’d say that the Archer vs Berserker fight was when the animation began to shine and it didn’t really look back from there. All of the final fights are pretty great and the animation quickly rose to be top tier in quality.

The fights are nice and varied throughout the show. Technically, most of them use swords or similar weapons to fight, but their personalities and Noble Phantasms are different enough to make them all exciting. At it’s best, the show definitely contains some of the best fights that you’ll see in anime and the speed is comparable to Bleach and Sword Art Online with how fast they’re swinging their swords. My favorite fight is actually Soichiro against the heroes (Round 1) since it was fun to see how a hand to hand fighter would fare against them. Let’s just say that I have my answer!

Fate Stay Night doesn’t disappoint with the soundtrack either. Most of the themes used in the episodes are opera themed and they fit the dark atmosphere perfectly. The battles all have an epic feeling to them and even the to be continued music is pretty catchy as well as the preview music. I didn’t care for the first theme song at all and it likely helped the first half to not be quite as exciting as the latter episodes. Luckily, the second theme song is pretty great and I would say that it’s easily one of the best anime openings. The music is definitely 5 star material and there aren’t many anime that can match it in the end.

Overall, Fate Stay Night is a pretty solid anime and it can hold up against the current mainstream titles like Sword Art Online and Attack on Titan. (Slaying Titan and Completing its victory against SAO) The cast of characters is pretty large and while some of them may be bland or unlikable, there are quite a few of good characters in the mix. The soundtrack and animation are pretty good and help to make the show that much more enjoyable. I highly recommend this show to action fans. The plot is also pretty deep and the dialogue is interesting so you should also enjoy it for the story if you don’t care for action. My only regret is that Archer didn’t get to fight Gilgamesh.

Overall 7/10

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