I now own the Blu Ray! Definitely one of the best DBZ films out there and helped to erase the memories of Battle of Gods. This film is only matched by legendary titles like Broly and Android 13, but may even surpass them!
The series is off to a good start so far. The arc doesn’t fall off the rails quite as hard as the previous arc so hopefully the manga can spin this into a decent ending. Either way, it’ll be a while before I finish the series, but I shall have a review up for when I do.
Overall 7/10
Now this is a series that I started a long time ago, way back in 2011. It’s been almost 6 years, but I finally got around to finishing the series. Needless to say, I’m afraid that it is on Vampire Knight’s level. The negatives are completely different and there are no fight scenes here. You may like the series more if you like babies a lot and find their actions adorable, but for someone who’s not particularly fond of them and prefers a nice action scene…it could be a looooong ride!
Takuya’s mom passed away a long time ago so he now takes care of his little brother Minoru. Their Dad’s also around to help of course, but he’s typically at work, which is why it ends up being Takuya’s responsibility. Takuya constantly gets upset at Minoru and they fight all the time, but in the end he learns that their bond is strong and shall never fade despite their mishaps. In theory, it’s a very touching experience. In theory anyway….. A plot never really develops since it stays as a slice of life for its duration so prepare for all of the characters to get into various situations, but none of them ultimately have the depth and charisma that you would see from the characters in Sword Art Online Lost Song.
The cast of characters is actually really small considering that there are 18 volumes. There are maybe 10 big characters or even less, although there are naturally more minor supporting characters as well. It’s a slice of life series so the whole thing resides on the fact that you need to like the characters. Unfortunately, I didn’t care for any of them, which does hurt the experience.
First up is Takuya. He’s supposed to be the nice guy as mentioned by quite a few characters, but you never see that. He essentially spends the whole series being upset at Minoru and this is what ultimately ends up causing the car crash scenario. Takuya is not a character to look up too nor is he someone that you will end up admiring. In the end, the pressures of raising a kid are far too intense for him, but rather than admit it, Takuya tries to power on and this is not a winning strategy. It would like be watching a Scooby Doo episode where Shaggy and Scooby never get along.
Minoru isn’t any better though and he’s a pretty terrible character. This is where the series really dies. You’re supposed to find Minoru humorous or entertaining, but instead he’s a very grating character. He can’t actually talk yet so you just have to watch him waddle around everywhere and that wasn’t fun the first time he appeared. I haven’t met a good baby character (Who wasn’t actually an adult in disguise) that I’ve actually liked in any form of media and that doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon. Minoru just holds the series down and since he’s one of the main characters, that’s a pretty big anchor to weigh the series down.
Takuya’s dad is all right, but like Takuya he is always getting upset at every little thing. He gets a flashback of how he met Takuya’s mother, which was all right I suppose, but it didn’t make his character any better and he could have done a better job of making sure that Minoru had a baby sitter to help Takuya out. Gon is one of Takuya’s friends and I wouldn’t consider him a good character either. At this point, maybe I shouldn’t even bother saying if the character is good or not since you know my answer. The only credit I’ll give Gon is the fact that he doesn’t betray Takuya at the end and realizes that the newcomer is trying to drive them apart. Besides that, Gon doesn’t add anything to the series.
Akihiro and his family are main supporting characters in the series. There are 3-5 kids in the household of varying ages so they like to run around and cause a lot of tough situations. Even a birthday party gets dicey since the parents have to work and everyone forgets about it. They’re not bad though and I feel like this household would have made for a far more interesting series than what we got. Akihiro is probably the best character in Baby & Me by far. He see through all of the fake romance plots and just tells it like it is.
The final main supporting characters are another household which has a baby. I don’t remember the names of the two living there, I think one of them may have been Seiji. It’s not of any real importance in the long run though. One of them loves games and gambles a lot. He’s also a very laid back guy so he doesn’t mind just walking into the main character’s house whenever he feels like it. The lady is also pretty carefree and leaves her kid with the main characters to go watch a movie with “Seiji” once in a while.
As mentioned earlier, the main reason why this series tanked is due to the overall plot. With a plot so bad, it’s hard for anything to save it and the rest of the series didn’t try all that hard to correct this. One thing about Baby & Me is that it’s not actually a super happy/light series. It tries to be rather deep as you can tell with the final volume where Minoru is hit by a car. Can you think of any series where a toddler is gravely injured like that? It’s surprisingly not as kiddish as you would expect and that also comes back to bite it. The series bites off more than it can chew and I’d rather not even have the car crash scenario at the end since it’s a bit much. I’ve always considered little kids and senior citizens to basically be off limits as far as dangerous accidents are concerned.
There is also one annoying character who is always inappropriately grabbing Takuya as part of a running gag, which is anything but funny. It’s these kinds of things that hold the series back and guarantee it a place at the bottom of the totem pole. We didn’t get any fun plots that would have been a blast like team sport competitions, big races, or some kind of tournament. Now that would have definitely been exciting. There was a brief moment of danger with some gangsters and gambling though so that was neat.
I don’t really have much of a problem with the art. It’s not all that good, but it’s not very bad either. I suppose that I would call it somewhat standard or maybe a little sub-standard. It’s fairly clear, but when you don’t have a lot of action scenes to draw or anything of that sort, then it likely makes the job a little easier. It’s why just about any anime looks great when the characters are just standing around (Unless the character designs are faulty) but fight scenes can really vary in quality. Likewise with making something smaller scale like a sprite fight or a quick fan animation. You can take a while and make a really great still, but once you’re moving the characters around, it can get pretty intense! Of course, that’s what also makes the video since the fight scene is what everyone’s (Meaning me and all those who love fight scenes)
In the end, the series was just never all that fun. I can actually say that I’ve enjoyed Ouran Host Club and Vampire Knight more than I enjoyed Baby & Me. At least Ouran has some charasmatic characters which have started to save the series from the terrible pre arc and Vampire Knight had some good action scenes and (somehow) a better cast than Baby & Me. Baby & Me just never had that edge which could have made it a better series. I can’t say that there was ever a moment where the manga showed signs of getting better, but again, it’s hard to get better when your two main characters are not likable in the slightest. I took a lot of shots at Yuki and Zero in my Vampire Knight review, but they were still far more compelling than Takuya and Minoru.
Overall, Baby & Me was just a series that wasn’t for me. It was never a very interesting series and was rather dull like Go Go Monster. The characters were not interesting and the series took itself very seriously, which didn’t pan out. If you’re going to try to be a very serious series, then you need to either have a great plot like Dengeki Daisy or a lot of action like Kenshin. (Which still knew how to balance itself) The great plot is the most important part because I’ve read many serious series, which pulled it off. Baby & Me is about a kid who’s raising a baby…why is this a serious series? The plot alone should cause you some pause when you think about the concept. At least it did ensure that we weren’t blasted with crude humor all of the time. There may have been animal violence like the last pic hints, but I forgot, either way it may have just been one hit so it wasn’t terrible, but still terribly unnecessary and there could have been other moments that I forgot. If you want to read a good series about a kid who is actually trained by the baby, check out Hitman Reborn! Now that is a 9 star series, which shall certainly not disappoint you!
Overall 1/10
It’s time to take a look at a series that doesn’t sound all that promising from the title. Yes, I had a sneaking suspicion that Vampire Knight wouldn’t be all that good as it’s a vampire story. That’s reason enough for me to fear it. Moreover, it sounded like Rosario Vampire, but minus the action and fanservice. So, that’s a bad thing and a good thing, but it means that the series has absolutely nothing going for it except the blood sucking gimmick. (No worries, there is a little action at the very end of the series!) I was able to complete this series in a little under a year which is cool since I started it last January and I ended a few months ago. I forgot when exactly I completed it, but no matter, let’s jump into the review! No worries, this one doesn’t get a 0 so readers can rest easy that the manga managed to do something right!
Yuki Cross lives at a school where humans attend by day and vampires by night. Both sides are separated for their own safety and she’s one of the enforcers who makes sure that the two groups play by the rules. Her partner in all of this is Zero. With the two of them as the ultimate tag team, nothing’s ever gone wrong at the academy. What helps this situation run so smoothly is that the head of the school vampires is Kaname, a guy who believes in peace and justice. It all goes well for a while, but then things happen!
That’s more vague than usual! Well, it’s hard to say exactly when things went wrong since a lot happened in these 19 volumes. There are many different vampire factions who were vying for power. Towards the end, Kaname realizes that he must destroy all vampire nobles including himself so that only the weak ones will be left and then they can’t bully the humans so easily. Zero is corrupted and turned into a vampire himself so even though he is a vampire hunter, he will be confronted with many tough choices. Yuki also starts to get her memories back and realizes that she is a vampire noble as well, but this comes along with some spiffy new powers so it’s not totally a bad thing.
So, should I start out with the negatives, positives, or the technical aspects like the art? I decided which option to go with by heading to Smashfaqs and based it on the top 5 topics. They were surprisingly positive ones so let’s roll with that. A positive for the manga is the fact that it actually has fight scenes once in a while. Zero and Kaname get into a scuffle at one point and even Yuki gets in on the action thanks to her powerful scythe. Zero gets control over plants and Kaname has super strength, mental abilities, speed, magic, and a lot of other things to keep the other two in check. The fights are cool even if there aren’t a whole lot of them.
The art counts as a technical aspect as well as a positive one for the most part. The art can get cluttered during the action scenes at times. Especially when the plants are around, but it can also be quite clear during other moments and I’d say that the artist does a fairly good job. I’d say that the art looks a lot better than the average Shojo series. It’s clear, intense, and you won’t mix up any of the main characters. Supporting characters are a different story since you can only see so many random guys running around before starting to mix them up a bit. Kaoru and Hikaru are still confusing in Ouran, but at least one of them switched his hair color after a while.
Unfortunately, I can’t say that there are any real characters since they all get tainted at one point or another. If we’re counting super mild characters, then I didn’t mind Zero’s hunter boss. He was fairly reasonable the whole time and you could tell that he was experienced the whole time. He hyped himself up a little too much at times though and he’s only my favorite character by default, I’m certainly not a big fan of his.
A positive for the series is naturally the fact that there’s basically no fanservice to be found. That’s always appreciated even if it is the norm for Shojo, you still don’t want to neglect to give it some props for this. Unfortunately, this is somewhat negated by the blood sucking scenes and such, but that’s a different negative. So, here essentially ends the positives section, but I’ll try to think of some more while writing the review.
Let’s start off with the blood sucking. See, the problem with vampires is that they’re going to drink blood. Inevitably, one of them ends up contaminating a main character. (In this case, everyone was contaminated except for one of Yuki’s close friends who never evolved from being a bit player in the whole thing) After that, the main character will offer his or her friend to drink some blood so that the character won’t have to hurt someone else. That happens here of course, several times and shows that the characters have no will power. Especially the fact that they always go overboard. Another cliche is that Yuki for example may say to only take a little bit since taking too much blood can be quite dangerous. Zero agrees, but then he can’t stop himself once he actually starts and it’s always a very wince worthy moment since he is supposed to be her friend. It’s hard to buy the fact that he simply can’t control himself and this has even started to finally happen in Seraph of The End, which is regrettable. Why do the heroes ultimately lose control so easily!?
That’s a rather big negative and ignoring the whole blood angle, there is naturally a ton of romance here as well. Luckily, there was a twist towards the very end that Kaname wasn’t actually Yuki’s brother, but was an ancestor. This naturally helped since we don’t want the manga to have gone down that route, but romance is romance and it was poorly executed from start to finish here. Both Kaname and Zero use Yuki when circumstances arise and both of them never actually trust her enough to let Yuki know the full scope of what’s happening. Why should she bother to stay with them? Yuki never quite broke off things with either party and the romance just dragged on and on like a bad soap opera. There was even another character who tried not to get involved with such things, but he was forced to become a blood sucker, which essentially made him a prisoner and he could not help out the heroes anymore. There was nothing positive to say about the romance.
Now, it’s time to go more in depth about the characters. Yuki started out as your average main character. She was fairly lively and always saw the bright side of the situation. Romance plots aside, she wasn’t a bad character. Unfortunately, then she turned into a vampire and decided to cross more gray lines and act a little more like a vampire. One scene in particular that was bad was when she decided to erase Zero’s memories. Think of the situation in Justice League when Batman’s mind was wiped or Captain America from the New Avengers comics. Yuki may have wanted to do it for Zero’s own good, but she ended up crossing a line that should not have been crossed. Becoming a vampire also made her lose her happy personality as she became a little too wise and took on a more somber role. She decently handled that role, but definitely fell rather rapidly as a character.
There was definitely no way that I was going to like Kaname. He always acted rather polite and such at the beginning of the series, but it was always an act. He could never make up his mind and wanted to be with Yuki someday and preferred solitude at other times. He decided to destroy all of the Nobles randomly and while it may not have totally been a bad decision, it’s not like all of the nobles were evil or sought to destroy people. Luckily, a plot twist showed that Kaname did spare one of them so I’ll give him credit for that. Portraying himself as the villain was definitely an intriguing move and one that I still don’t see a whole lot of benefit from. In the end, vampires and humans will never be able to perfectly get along because both sides have so many bad apples inside of them. It’s just how the world works and there will always be another new villain to seize the throne. Kaname’s also the one who turned Yuki into a vampire, which doesn’t earn him any brownie points as a character.
Zero’s the other main hero and he’s pretty terrible. I liked him a lot more than Kaname for a while, but then he lost control and succumbed to the blood sucking temptations. That destroyed him as a character. Shojo series like to typically have two main guys, the nice one and the mean one. Zero served as the mean one and a fairly extreme version of the character type at times. He would even point his gun at Yuki once she became a vampire. I don’t see that turning into a healthy romance in the long term so it’s another plot that I couldn’t get behind and I found it hard to sympathize with Zero throughout the series. At least he has a gun/vine powers so he’s a decent fighter, but his fighting abilities can’t save his personality.
As you can see, I wasn’t a big fan of any of the main characters. With a series this long, there are naturally a lot of other characters, but most of them actually aren’t that important to the plot compared with these. We do have other villains, supporting characters, and other heroes, but they are all just around to add more detail to the world. In the end, it really just comes down to the three main characters and the choices that they make since they will drastically affect the characters around them. From the supporting characters, I suppose that I didn’t mind the headmaster or Yuki’s friend all that much. Yuki’s friend was always nice to Yuki and offered words of advice, but she never did all that much aside from that. The headmaster always knows more than he lets on, but he prefers to let the heroes fend for themselves.
Kaname had a posse around him at all times, but by and large you won’t remember them after a while. You have the girl member who also likes Kaname and naturally resents Yuki. That’s her whole character arc for the most part. There are a few guys there who have ties to other families and talk a good game, but they don’t do all that much of consequence. One of them is brainwashed and the others try to help Kaname even after he has earned a negative reputation, but that’s about it for them. One of the main villains was a noble vampiress who went around brainwashing as many of the human students as possible with her blood. Kaname eventually stopped her, but she definitely got a lot of casualties in the meantime. Shizuka was her name and her death is rather intense.
The manga was never quite as happy as the average Shojo series and was always serious business so it was not all that surprising that there could be some violent moments. It’s nothing toooo bad of course, just a heart stab here and there (Vampires are quite durable) and it works as Kaname hype. It doesn’t even feel all that out of place and I wouldn’t say that it goes too far. You’ll know the scenes when they happen. The other big villain is Rido. He’s so powerful that he thinks Kaname won’t make a move against him. Kaname quickly destroys him (Not a total destruction since the bond of master and student wouldn’t let him, but the guy was reduced to ash so it’s more or less the same thing) and that’s the end of that. I can’t say that either villain was all that interesting in the end.
This definitely isn’t your average Shojo series, but it ends up losing to those. This further cements the notion for me that it is almost impossible to do a good vampire story. They end up just not being all that good. Records of a Fallen Vampire is probably still the only good vampire story and it was impressive. Maybe someday a series can follow that example, but I suspect that many other series will try and fail to do so first. Such is simply how these things end up going down.
Overall, Vampire Knight is not for the faint of heart or for those looking for a good story. If you’re a huge vampire buff then this is probably up your ally. As it stands, the characters simply aren’t likable and all of the romance plots fall back. The series takes itself a little too seriously with all of the tearful origin stories lying about. I did enjoy the occasional action scene, but those are few and far between. Based on the pictures I used, the series certainly looks more exciting than I’m giving it credit for, but keep in mind that they’re images that are meant to be misleading. I wouldn’t use the boring pictures now would I? It’s certainly no Black Bird and at least earns 1 star, but you’re better off reading Records of a Fallen Vampire instead of this title.
Overall 1/10
It’s time for another Digimon review! This film’s definitely a classic and I’ve probably seen it 10 times or more at this point. It’s certainly the film that I think of whenever I see Digimon and now I can say that I’ve seen it dubbed and subbed. Naturally, the dubbed version wins out, but both versions are good in their own rights. Diaboromon will always be remembered as one of the best villains in the franchise. (Also due to Rumble Arena 2)
Tai and friends haven’t really kept in touch lately, but the DigiDestined are forced to join up again when a computer virus threatens to destroy the world. It’s hacked into electronics all around the country. Tai and Izzy were luckily already at home when this all happened, but Sora, Mimi, and Joe are currently busy. Matt and TK are ready to help though so the four of them will have to be enough to stop Diaboromon!
As per usual, the dub tries for a lighter, more intense angle on the film while the sub tries for a super serious and solemn approach. Typically, the music is what really illustrates this. Unfortunately, there are no good themes in the subbed version as a result. I wouldn’t call them bad per say, but none of them work as battle themes. Meanwhile, the dub keeps everything very fast paced, but you’ll also have to get ready for health drink jokes and the like.
I was never a fan of the animation for this film and it’s a step down from the Hurricane special for 02. The humans just look very, I guess you could say sludgey. It’s like what happens when you overly streamline a character. It can almost be disorienting since the character’s physical forms don’t seem to be too physical. It’s what I like to call the anti-theater effect. See, I’ve mentioned in the past how the theater effect can be awesome. It can make the colors really stand out and the fights awesome, but the opposite effect is what’s seen in many American films. Just think of any theater based American film, I’ve never seen one that actually had very good animation. They all try to be lifelike and as a result, they unfortunately succeed. Luckily, this doesn’t stop the fight scene in Our War Game from being good.
This was the debut of Omnimon and that was certainly a lot of fun to see. He was the series first Super Mega (Officially he’s just a Mega but when 2 Mega Digimon fuse I can’t consider the result to be just another Mega) and he certainly out ranked Diaboromon in power. We haven’t gotten to see Omnimon fight all that much in the franchise since then, but in Digimon Savers we saw that he’s still a powerhouse and I’m sure that in the new movie series he will get some big fights. Most of the other Digimon didn’t get to do a whole lot here, but it was a quick film so there wasn’t a lot of time to include them.
It also resulted in a pretty epic scene where Diaboromon attacked during the evolution sequence, which is probably a great speed feat since I assume that it’s almost instantaneous. I liked the subplot of how kids sending email to Izzy and friends was slowing down their Digimon. It makes sense since they had to rely on an old computer to power up their allies this time and rerouting their emails to Diaboromon’s account makes sense since that is actually a pretty easy feature to do nowadays. No plot hax there, which is how it should be.
As always, Tai’s a pretty hardcore lead character. He’s even able to infiltrate the Digital World like an old pro. I’ve never been much of an Izzy fan and I’m still not, but at least he booted up the computer for Tai to save the world with and showed up unlike some of the other DigiDestined. The other members really need some kind of communicator so they can always be in contact. The main member who looked bad was actually Kari since she picked up the phone, but didn’t want to leave the party. It was a case of international security so she absolutely should have showed up. Nothing should have prevented her from making it back even if she may not have been able to help all that much in the end.
One thing that I actually did miss in this film though was the fact that the humans and Digimon were separated by the screen. Fighting in the Digital World or in the Human world together as a team is always more exciting and especially when the human characters can fight as well like Marcus. In a way, it’s more like Megaman NT Warrior this way, but the separation prevented emotions from running quite as high and the stakes from getting a little more personal.
I like to think that this film is what got most of the characters so popular. Diaboromon and Omnimon certainly hit it off big after this and I’d still say that both of them are some of the most popular Digimon around. I’m hoping that Diaboromon appears at some point in the new films since that would be pretty neat. At the moment, Our War Game is definitely the best Digimon film at the block so it sets the standard for the others to follow and the line that they hope to surpass someday.
Overall, Our War Game is a solid Digimon film as always. It’s a little light on action, but it’s a short film overall so there’s not a whole lot that they really could have added on that note. I recommend either version, but the dub first and foremost. Maybe even watch both since the film has a decent amount of replay value. I’ve probably seen it over and over enough times to keep me satisfied so I don’t need to see it again for a long while, but if you’re looking for a film with monster fights, this is your best bet. Until then, I’ve got Tri to look forward too as well as the Diaboromon rematch film.
Overall 7/10
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