Slayers Try Review

Posted on April 25, 2015 by dreager1

It has been a while, but I am finally back with a review for the third Slayers series! I enjoyed the first series and then the second upped the ante in just about every way. Slayers Next will likely be remembered as the pinnacle of the Slayers franchise, but there is still more to come. Slayers Try…tries a little too hard to be a mix of Slayers and Slayers Next by adding some powerful threats, but also trying to go back to the days of random adventures like in the first series. It is a mix that backfires quite a bit like GT, but still ends up being a good show.

Lina Inverse and her gang of heroic crooks are fairly happy about how their latest victory went. They decided to split up for a while and maybe they would bump into each other at some point in the future. Well, this happens sooner than they may have expected! Aside from Sylphiel, the gang meets up with Zelgadis who is still trying to learn the secret of how to transform himself. He’ll never accomplish this goal, but at least he is still trying. Zelgadis decides to stay with Lina and pals after they meet a mysterious figure who goes by the name, Filia.

Filia tells the heroes that they are destined to save the world! Lina refuses, but Filia explains that the heroes are her last hope as all of the best heroes don’t want to do this task. Lina and the gang are forced into accepting the quest under threat of imminent destruction (Lina’s sister is too powerful for them) and they must now….stop this threat. The problem is that they have no idea how to stop the danger that is approaching since the heroes don’t even know what kind of trouble to expect. They only have Filia’s guesses and intuition to guide them! I may as well say that the threat is caused by Overworlder’s (gods) who seek to change the status quo and unleash ultimate darkness across the world!

Typically, it only takes me one paragraph to describe the plot, but a lot has happened so two was necessary here. The lack of plot can be a little eerie, but it works into Try’s gameplan. It want to be episodic like the first series, but with serious stakes like the second one. This is still a dicey mix to achieve and I should explain why it doesn’t work out. The classic way to handle this would be to have the episodic parts for the first half and then to throw in a plot. This has worked in many shows like Trigun, Cardfight Vanguard, Digimon Savers, etc. The problem is that Try threw in the plot as early in as episode 1 and then ditches it towards the middle of the show. We get 6-15 filler episodes in the show.

All right, let’s not guess here. A quick Wikipedia search tells me that we have 7 “filler” episodes. The quotations are necessary as they technically have canon elements. We have a 2 part episode involving a holy grail weapon, which shows us that dark magic can be destroyed for the first time in the series. It is what inspires Lina’s final attack on the monster in the final episodes. 2-3 of the other filler episodes involve finding the characters after they failed in the fake climax, but I would still count them. That’s also not counting the episodes that were 15-18 minutes of filler with a plot heavy beginning/ending.

So, this really disrupted the pacing. The episodes where the heroes were on the boat were easily the worst ones. Slayers has always been a roller coaster series of ups and downs, but it has typically been more steady than this one. Try’s best episodes rank up there with the best of Next while the worst ones are some of the worst in the franchise. Not really because of anything relating to content, but they simply felt boring and unnecessary. Case in point, the two part episode about getting 2 Kingdoms to make peace with each other. I feel like we’ve seen this plot so many times already and I really didn’t understand what the point of it all was. It destroys whatever tension you had thanks to the villains showing up.

Luckily, that’s where the good episodes come into play. For just about the whole series, I was positive that this show was going to get a 6. Then we got the good climax, which made this more of a real battle. The fights in this series could take up a whole episode at times, which was great. The final batch of episodes is really one big fight that keeps on restarting and it is good to see the feats from both the heroes and the villains. There is no shortage of action and excitement in the climax of the series and we also got a nice batch of fights during the middle of the series as well. During these two high points, you would never be able to tell that this was the same series that we had started with.

Lina Inverse is the main character and she is once again leading the charges against those who would stand in her way. As a human, Lina is essentially the enemy of all other races so she needs to have a strong personality to combat these threats. Lina has also grown more powerful over the course of these adventures. While she used to not be able to deal any real damage to the big threats, now she has two aces up her sleeve. The Ragna Blade and the Giga Slave. These two attacks have been shown to work on almost any opponent with virtually no exceptions. It likely couldn’t completely KO a Dark Lord (The Blade anyway) but these attacks have allowed Lina to stay on the offensive. Her speed is not increased and I’ll mention that a little more towards the end of the review, but this is still a great improvement. Now, she can back up her tough talk!

Lina’s endearing personality is what makes her a great lead. She certainly won’t take any insults from someone without a fight. Whether it is an ally or an enemy, she will quickly unleash her full power. Lina is still not your average hero as she will occasionally blow up villages and mountains by mistake, but she does end up saving the world so hopefully it all balances out. Slayers wouldn’t be nearly as interesting without her in the lead.

Gourry is Lina’s partner and he’s always been a very interesting character to watch even if he is very unlikable. It is a bit of a tricky puzzle eh? The first episodes of this show continue to prove why he will never be likable, but at least he does provide the show with a lot of its humor. He never understands the gravity of a situation, but that doesn’t stop him from trying his best. Gourry always has his game face on and with his Sword of Light, he can deal some heavy damage to just about anyone. He did go up against Valgaav after all! He’s about the same from the past two series, which is good. If they made him likable, then that would be even better.

Amelia’s role here is certainly smaller than in the first two series. She is still a member of royalty, but she doesn’t get her own adventures this time. She’s simply tagging along for the ride like Zelgadis. She’s still a nice character and she gets her hits in at times. It’s hard to say who the weak link of the team is at this point as it is between her and Zelgadis. It is very close, but she tries her best and fills the team with optimism. They certainly need at least one hero on the team right?

Zelgadis continues to lose more and more of his dignity. I’d bet dollars to donuts that the writers for Try did not like him as a character. He is literally used as bait, an anchor, and simply tossed around when it is time for jokes. He may have been a decent character in the original series and almost decent in Next, but now he’s just a really bad character. I find it almost impossible to like him. It is too bad since he gets a lot of scenes that are supposed to make you say “Snap, this guy’s cool!” That is not my reaction to the scenes and I can’t think of a single moment where Zelgadis actually did a critical thing here. Not a single scene……his fans will not be pleased.

Filia is the new addition to the group and she ends up replacing Sylphiel. She is a gold dragon and her powers are impressive during her first appearance. As a gold dragon, her speed was so great that none of the main characters could land a hit on her. (An accurate depiction of speed…impossible!) Unfortunately, that’s where the buck stops as she is not really useful against any other opponents for the rest of the series. She evidently has some useful abilities like super strength and her spells, but the enemies are always one step ahead of her. It’s too bad as the exact same thing happened to Sylphiel.

As far as personality goes, she has a little Amelia in her. Filia thinks of herself as a bit of a hero so she is always dismayed when the heroes engage in criminal activities. She also does a lot of soul searching as the series goes on because of what her fellow golden dragons did. Perhaps she takes this a little too personally as she had nothing to do with most of their evil deeds. It is regrettable, but she doesn’t need to lose all hope over it. She nearly jeopardizes the final battle as she proved to be indecisive. Her rivalry with Xellos is fun though and while she is no match for him in a fight, perhaps she can defeat him in the battle of burns. (Burns=Insulting an opponent so well that you metaphysically burned them) As far as the main cast goes, it is: Lina>>Amelia>>Filia>>Sylphiel>>Zelgadis>>Gourry>>>>>>>Xellos. So, Filia’s rank isn’t all that bad. She could certainly better, but her personality fits in well with the team and doesn’t get old quite as quickly as Zelgadis’ gimmick. It’s also good to have a little more muscle power on the team.

Ah…now it’s time to talk about Xellos. A seriously disliked him from his very first appearance. While he will likely never look quite as bad as in Next, he’s still not my kind of character. For starters, he is constantly betraying the heroes to advance on his own goals. He is a monster through and through so he does remind the heroes that they should never trust him. Just because he makes that clear from the start, doesn’t make it any less sad when he betrays them again. Xellos has physically attacked the team during their scuffles and while he typically holds back so they aren’t very injured, he has come close to destroying the world. The heroes really need to treat him like a total enemy and stop pulling their punches. The sad thing is that Xellos could easily destroy the heroes in an instant if he so desires. He is really just toying with them and that can’t help the egos of the heroes all that much. As a villain, it can be fun to see Xellos act so smug and insult all of the other villains, but I wish that the show would totally keep him on the villain side. It would make him much more bearable. Still, it we’re just talking about this series, he is not that bad. I’ll never consider him as a villain though. How would the rankings change if we just counted this series? I suppose that he would jump over Gourry and Zelgadis. It’s possible that he could also pass Sylphiel, but it would be close.

All right, it is time to talk about the best villain in the show. He is also potentially the best character in the series as well. I’m talking about Valgaav! Valgaav is a mix of monster and dragon so his abilities are quite formidable. He is one of the only opponents to be on the winning side against Xellos and he takes on a good portion of the cast at once. That is before the final power up that he gets, which made him virtually unstoppable. He is a villain who had a tragic past and he loves jumping into peril. He’s simply my kind of villain and he acts like other all stars. (Grimmjow comes to mind) All of his fights are interesting and I’m glad that he didn’t decide to listen to Almayce like the average pawn. If Valgaav wanted to do something, then he would just go and do it! He had a nice blend of emotional moments as well as intense ones. Really, when it all boils down to it, Valgaav is probably the best character in the franchise. I thought about it for a bit and there is really no better character. It is a shame since he will likely never appear again, but at least he got a grand role in this series. Thanks to his final power up, you can definitely make the claim that he is the strongest character in the series. The Lord of Nightmares may contest that though. Valgaav got to prove that he was stronger than the other three villains, which is a good enough start for me! Maybe we’ll get a spinoff/prequel about him someday..maybe. (His origin isn’t exactly something that I’m very interested in though so I’d want it to take place right before Try) Valgaav also gave us the very first, big fight of Try so his debut was a very memorable one.

Almayce is the big villain for most of the series, but it is safe to say that he overestimated his power. He’s actually weaker than the other three big villains of the series although it seems like he could potentially still defeat Xellos. So, maybe he also outranks two of the other opponents, but it is hard to say. His design is great and he looked like a very menacing villain for a while. The problem is that he doesn’t know where he stands. On one hand, he is certainly a villain as he is constantly hurting people and endangering lives. On the other hand, he is trying to save the planet while getting rid of Dark Star…..I’ll just count him as a villain.

Because he is constantly switching sides, Almayce loses sight of what is happening and that’s when the villains make their move. Almayce went down rather easily even though he should have been expecting someone to destroy him. He was causing trouble for both the heroes and the other villains. It would have been cool to have seen him fight more, but he still made for a fun boss to oppose the heroes.

Erulogs joins the fray towards the end of the series along with Sirius. It was odd to see him join in as the series was already heading to a close, but the more villains the better right? I liked him more than Sirius, less than Valgaav, and slightly more than Almayce. His abilities were very impressive as the heroes could not hold a candle to his power. He felt like the average DBZ villain and that is always a good thing. It is too bad that he didn’t get more of a role.

It was still bigger than the role of Sirius though. Sirius is the more rational of the two villains and he wants to learn as much as he can. He also doesn’t mind sparing the Earth as long as it won’t hurt his chances of survival. He is a villain that the heroes can work with and his abilities are still impressive. He doesn’t seem to be as tough as Erulogs, but he is still tough enough to keep the heroes back. While his design was not too good, his personality made him a decent villain.

It is worth mentioning the Dragon King Elder because he is so terrible that it becomes laughable towards the end. Not literally as this guy did single handily bring two different species of dragons to their extinction. (Filia may be the only dragon in existence anymore. Certainly the only Gold one left and the ancient ones are gone as well) The Elder wants the gold dragons to rule over all, but his life comes first and foremost. He is defiant to the end as he dies while explaining that he regrets nothing and he would do it all over again. He betrays his heroes to the villains and doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of common sense. It is regrettable that he became the leader of the Golden Dragons since he definitely did not have their best interests at heart.

Dark Star is the big villain for this series and he lives up to the hype. It is always fun to meet another Dark Lord from the tree of power. Shabranigdo is still the most impressive beast, but Dark Star is no slouch in the power department. Simply by flapping his wings, he can bring the heroes to the verge of death and he can shoot a variety of energy blasts. Dark Star’s flight speed is incredible and he’s a known planet destroyer. Everything about this villain is cool and hie design is actually like the symbiote from Marvel. At least the face resembles Venom. Dark Star is virtually unstoppable and his only weakness are the legendary weapons of light. Without them, you can essentially confirm the destruction of your planet. Spells don’t hurt him because Dark Star’s soul is in another plane of existence so physical attacks are the only way to challenge him. Dark Star made for a great end boss to the series and he’s probably the second best monster villain behind Shabranigdo.

Aside from the serious villains, we also got some low ranking ones to mention. Jillas was mostly played for laughs, but he actually got a serious subplot towards and the end and it hit you right in the feels. (Feels=Emotions. So, if something hits you in the feels, it’s like metaphysically hitting your sad or happy emotion and triggering that feeling inside of you. That’s how I’ve always thought of it anyway.) He has to leave his family at the end to help defend the planet and he also decides to finally move away from his thoughts of revenge. While most of the characters in the series have magical abilities, Jillas is stuck with his sheer intelligence. He is good at making bombs, but that certainly won’t carry him very far against the kinds of villains that are present here. He was fairly likable though at times and he was much better than his partner.

Gravos is an ogre type of demon and he never becomes likable. The writers don’t even try to make him sympathetic aside from an incredibly brief origin story. He means well I suppose as he is just following orders, but he isn’t nearly as interesting as Jillas. At least Jillas has his motivations and desires to keep him going, but Gravos is more of a two dimensional villain. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t exactly help me like his character either.

While the series is typically very light toned, there are a few moments of violence that clash with the rest of the series. The battle between Xellos and Valgaav was pretty brutal and likewise for the origin stories of Jillas and Gravos. This happened in the previous two Slayers series as well as everything would be very chipper until a sudden violent scene makes you take a double look. It’s nothing over the top though and it is typically quick so you don’t need to dwell on it, but the violence is certainly around. The dragons get extinct…twice, and they certainly don’t go down without a fight. Xellos vs Valgaav is still the one that will stick out the most simply because the show still plays Xellos off as a hero of sorts and this is certainly not heroic behavior. He is a monster and he is technically a villain, but the heroes barely treat him as such.

It is also about time for me to quickly address the plot hax that is present here. Now, this is a problem is virtually all forms of media and in almost all titles. Still, the plot hax is especially prevalent here as Lina and her friends are a group of humans who are trying to stop extremely powerful forces. No matter how many great spells they get like the Ragna Blade, there is no way that Lina and friends should last a minute against such powerful foes. Almost all of the high level monsters and gods are shown to move at hyper speeds. Lina is still a human and can’t run much faster than a normal one. At most, she is Captain America level in speed and power. She should still get speedblitzed at the beginning of every match.

The Slayers verse seems to place a lot of emphasis on physical power and none on speed, which is a little misguided. Raw power does not matter if you cannot hit the opponent and that’s my main problem with the title. Lina should be way too slow for any of her attacks to be useful here and she still manages to get in some good hits at times. It’s just a little odd and certainly unbelievable, but it is simply the route that the show has gone. Perhaps the writers feel that Lina and her pals would be less relatable if they had special powers aside from their spells. It’s their choice I suppose.

The animation is a step down from Next, but it still looks good. I’m assuming that the budget was likely reduced, but the series still has enough juice in it for some epic action scenes. The rest of the series is just a little more pale and dated than the vibrantly colorful Next. The fights are the important part though and the long action scenes are as good as you could have hoped for here. The heroes give it their all now that they can finally fight a little more: Gourry with his improved Sword of Light mastery, Lina with her Ragna Blade, Zelgadis with his sword, etc.

There’s not much to say about the soundtrack since it is the same as in the previous two shows. As for the theme song, it is all right, but it could be better. It is just not as exciting and moving as it could have been, but it is not a bad theme song either. Perhaps the end themes of the Slayers movies have simply spoiled me as they would certainly work better as a theme song than what we got here. The theme song is also a little misleading. As the overall soundtrack has not changed, Slayers Try sounds just as good as the first two installments.

Overall, Slayers Try is a good series. I was hesitant to give it the full 7 as it did have its share of issues with the pacing and just not being quite as fun as the first two series, but it comes very close to reaching that mark. The soundtrack has not changed and the animation has only dipped a little. The main team of Lina and Gourry is still one of the driving forces of the show. The ending certainly feels like it could have been the end of the franchise, but it still would have been a sad one as I disagreed with Gourry’s decision. We got to meet some more powerful beasts from the Slayers verse and I look forward to eventually seeing an ultimate confrontation between the humans, dragons, monsters, and gods. My money is certainly on the monsters, but it would be a good fight. The balance between humor and action can be awkward, especially when mixed. Xellos being defeated by a song towards the end was a little random, but I’ll assume that he is just trolling as per usual. Jumping from serious moments to comedy ones is a delicate art that is hard to master. Slayers Next probably did the best job, but Slayers Try gave it a fair effort. I recommend checking this series out if you want a good fantasy title and while you don’t need to watch the first two series first, I would still recommend doing so. At least, Slayers Next, since one of the main villains wants to destroy the heroes because of what happened there.

Overall 6/10

Dragon Ball Z Rebirth of F Review

Posted on April 21, 2015 by dreager1

To celebrate the upcoming DBZ movie, they made a three chapter mini series that covers the first 20-30 minutes of the film. It naturally ends right when the big battles are about to get started so that you can actually see the film. I look forward to seeing is when it is dubbed in the summer, but until then this teaser is pretty fun to check out. The action scenes are good and it gives you an idea of what the film is going to be like. So, it’s brief, but fun.

Frieza has returned and he is preparing to demolish the Earth. First, he wants revenge on Goku for what happened on Namek so he has dispatched an army to attack it. He is now biding his time for Goku to show up. Meanwhile, Goku and Vegeta are training with Whis so that they can reach new levels of power. It’s slow goings though and they simply don’t have enough time to learn as Frieza appears on Earth. The series ends with Frieza about to unveil his new form and the heroes must now be prepared for the fight of their lives!

The art here is very good as can be expected of something in the Dragon Ball franchise. The designs are simple, but effective and likewise with the rest of the art. The pages never feel cluttered and it is always clear as to what’s happening on the page. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve always liked the art so much in Bleach and it works just as well in Dragon Ball. The fight scenes really look great as well, which is a nice combo.

The series is very short so there’s not a whole lot more to say about it. That being said, there are some elements here that should have you a little worried. For one thing, I feel like Goku and Vegeta are being really downplayed lately. We can’t ignore how sad it is that Frieza just trained for a little while and was able to surpass Vegeta and Goku’s normal forms. There’s no way that he should even be close to their level of power no matter how much he trained. Has everyone forgotten that Saiyans are the best at training and getting power ups? Surpassing them is no easy feat and I think that this new movie is really downplaying that feat.

It gets worse when you consider that Bills and Whis are drastically stronger than Goku and Vegeta now. I seriously cannot buy that for an instant. It’s wrong and simply not right. I don’t mind Bills being decently strong, but not after he gave Frieza so much hype last time. Even then, Goku should have utterly stomped him in the actual fight. Since he wasn’t able to do that, the ending was very disappointing. While Goku will likely wreck Frieza more than Bills, it’s still sad that Bills and Whis are shown to be so much stronger than Goku and Vegeta.

The Saiyans actually get nervous around those two villains, which is really embarrassing. Also, this does not just affect those two as Gohan gets hit rather hard by the nerfs as well. He can barely enter Super Saiyan mode anymore and he is shown to be incredibly weak. Even if he never trained, he would never have lost so much power. He’s still Gohan and his abilities were incredible back in the day. Seeing him take on less minions than Krillin and Roshi is a little embarrassing. I’m sure that he’ll look more impressive in the film, but he seems like “just another saiyan” rather than being acknowledged as one of the heavy hitters.

Jaco joins the cast to fight Frieza and it’s cool to have a guest star on board. I’m a little skeptical as to how he can keep up with these guys at all though. Seriously, his power level is just sad and his jet pack can only go so far. Even if his gun can disintegrate the villains, he shouldn’t have a chance of keeping up with them. Dragon Ball’s never been the best in terms of power levels, but we’re really starting to push the envelope here.

Of course, the power levels debate may be a little sad for this part of the franchise, but it’s still a really fun read for the action and excitement. You just don’t want to focus on the logic of it all or you may start to fall into the “Superman is stronger than Goku” trap and we wouldn’t want that! On the bright side, we are finally seeing the Z fighters become Sun busters and they’re even getting cool abilities. Whis can move through time, which is really good since time travel is about as overpowered as you can get. If Goku can learn this trick, that will certainly be fun. It won’t help him feel any stronger to me, but it would still be a fun ability to have.

Overall, This manga will only take you about 10-20 minutes to read so you’ll be done with it really quickly. Naturally, it never drags on and you’ll actually be wishing that it was a little longer. I’m eagerly awaiting the film now. There are certainly a few plot holes involving Frieza’s new strength, but Dragon Ball has never been a series full of logic so we don’t have to take that too seriously. Either way, we’re still getting a new Dragon Ball Z adventure. No matter how the logic goes, the sheer fact that DBZ is still going is always a great thought. I still highly recommend checking this manga out and you will not regret it. Goku better win with ease in the end!

Overall 8/10

Rurouni Kenshin Secret Chapter To Rule Flame Review

Posted on April 11, 2015 by dreager1

All right, it is time to check out the prequel manga that came out for Kenshin a while back thanks to Mangastream’s hard work as they even translated the cover! This volume is about Shishio, the fan favorite villain who did end up being one of the better Kenshin antagonists. It’s a fairly good volume. We don’t get to see the heroes almost at all, which is a little unfortunate, but it’s good to have the universe back. I’m still not done with the original series myself, but I’m in the final volumes. Keep in mind that this review will have spoilers for the volume since it’s so short and hard to avoid such things.

Well, it’s an origin story so Shishio is naturally one of the main characters. He heads into a town with his right hand man and he awaits the rest of his 10 swords. It is almost time to make his big move so now he simply needs to bide his time. He stays at an inn where the hostess is legendarily tough to buy. Either way, Shishio doesn’t care for such things, but then the lady decides to buy his strength to save her friends. Shishio will need some kind of payment for this and the lady will have to think of something.

Well, the story definitely deals with some things that you don’t see all that often (For good reason) in a manga. The main heroine is actually a prostitute although she has essentially decided to stop in that practice as she allows no one to buy her anymore. Alas, in this time, women had fewer rights so a rich person decides to buy her anyway. The lady resigns herself to this fate, but her friends mistakenly find out about the rich guy’s evil plans so he decides to destroy them all. That is why the heroine has to ask Shishio for help. Shishio is reluctant, but she helps him realize that dying alone is not a happy fate so he accepts her help on the condition that her life is now his. When Shishio is about to die, he will destroy her as well. These are satisfactory conditions for the heroine and that’s essentially the origin of Shishio.

Luckily, the manga doesn’t put too much emphasis on the prostitution part. You know that it’s happening in the city, but we never see anything even close to that, which is certainly a smart move on the manga’s part. The ending is also a lot happier than I had figured although I suppose that it is in a morbid sort of way. Shishio acknowledges that he is ultimately going to hell, but he simply isn’t fighting it. He almost doesn’t care as he still wants to be evil and he will just bring as many people as he can with him. That certainly solidifies Shishio as a villain.

At least he is a cool villain though. He’s not one of those guys who will just make you wince and groan as you read the chapter. If this had been about a lesser villain or an insane one, then it would likely not have been nearly as good. As it stands, Shishio does ultimately help against the villains so that will make the story a lot more bearable. After all, if you’re teaming up with a villain who’s as skilled as Shishio, you should have nothing to worry about.

The villain for this story gets a lot of hype at first, but then it all fades away. I think the author just forgot about it or something because the actual battle is very anticlimactic. It’s essentially over in a slash, which is sad. Based off of the imagination battle that they had earlier, I would have expected a very good fight. The Kenshin series had plenty of excellent fights so another one would have been a lot of fun. I suppose that fighting was not the main draw for this spinoff, but it still would have been a lot of fun.

The artwork is solid as can be expected. The original series had some of the best art in Jump and evidently, that has not changed in the years that have went by. It’s easy to see what’s going on and the characters all look good. The brief action scenes that we do get are very impressive and make you miss the lack of action even more. Alas, you can’t have it all right?

The volume also does a good job of getting you interested in watching the main series again. It’s an interesting story from start to finish and we even have a big group moment where all of the villains get to use their big attacks. They certainly were an impressive group and it’s good that Kenshin had so many skilled allies or this would have been a very difficult fight to win. In the final page, we get to quickly see a little of Kenshin’s fight against Shishio, but that’s more of a homage than anything else.

The villain from the final arc of the Kenshin series also gets a cameo. He tries to talk tough, but we all know that he would be crushed if he ever tried to fight Shishio. Shishio is simply too powerful for him and the other villain only lasted so long because of trickery and his many minions. Shishio doesn’t need any tricks to fight well.

So, the story is a little dark, but it’s handled well. The only negative could actually be the prostitution part of the plot as it is a little much when you actually think about it. The main characters were nearly sold away after all, but at least most of them get a happy ending or a sudden sad one so things went well. The villains were also permanently stopped so that wins the manga back its points. I’d prefer that these things really aren’t even included as there’s not much of a reason to tackle these issues in an origin story, but it certainly could have been a lot worse.

Overall, This Secret Chapter was fun. It’s certainly great to be back in the Kenshin world and I wouldn’t mind more spinoffs in the future. A sequel series would also be a lot of fun with some new villains and more power ups to help the heroes rise up the tier list. If you read the main Kenshin series, then this is a must read. If you just want to read a one shot with a villain who helps out when it furthers his interests, it’ll also work out for you. The one shot is serious and deals with serious themes, but the ending is satisfying and the art is quite good. There’s a good reason why Kenshin is known as one of the elite manga titles and this one shot lives up to that reputation. I guess we’ll see if anymore one shots come out in the future.

Overall 7/10

2 Fast 2 Furious Review

Posted on April 10, 2015 by dreager1

With Furious 7 out in theaters, it’s the perfect time to continue my journey through the series. I can’t say that I was impressed with the first one at all, but this looks like one of those series that gets better as you go along. In theory anyway. This one is certainly more fun than the first film, but it still falls into most of the holes that the first did, which prevents it from ultimately being a good film.

Brian has fallen from the good grace of the police for letting his target escape in the first film. He now has fun in underground racing so he has ironically become the very criminal that he used to hunt. The cops eventually show up with a job for him. He is to pose as a racer for a criminal mastermind so that he can help the cops get some evidence on him. Brian will need a partner and that’s where Roman comes into play. They’re going to need to drive hard and drive fast if they want to win this round!

All right, let’s talk about the improvements from the first film first. For one thing, the racing scene at the beginning totally destroys the scenes from the previous film. The cars were going very fast and the new nitro effects were a lot of fun to watch. The dark background of the night contrasted with the bright colors and made for a very explosive race. It was tough to beat..evidently too tough to be honest. The film could not even come close to matching that race for the rest of the film, but it was still a very epic way to start off the film.

The characters are also a lot more interesting than the ones from the previous film. The dynamic between Brian and Roman can be good at times. Brian is portrayed as an expert when it comes to this kind of operation. After all, he has been through this before back during his cop days. That being said, he starts to lose control of the mission whenever he sees a pretty face. That’s where Roman comes in. He may not be an old pro officially, but he knows how to fit in rather easily and probably does a better job of convincing the villains of their authenticity than Brian. He’s probably not as good a driver as Brian, but he’s good enough.

The film is typically a lot of fun, which is a shame that it fell into numerous holes. Where to start right? First of all, let’s go for the rat scene. Each of these films will probably try to have at least one big gangster moment to show us how evil the villains are. The first one had the scene where the villains forced someone to drink oil and this one has the villain pin a man down and watch as a rat starts to eat through his stomach. It’s a very gruesome scene to say the least. I prefer the classic “Held at gunpoint” trope as it shows that the villain is ready and the hero still knows that the guy is willing to pull the trigger.

Another aspect is still the underground/gangster feel that the films try to have. This results in a whole lot of unfortunate fanservice. The characters wear skimpy attire and are constantly making suggestive remarks. Roman and Brian naturally take part in these shenanigans as well, which is sad. What happened to professionalism? I fear that it died with James Bond and Captain Kirk taking office. It almost goes without saying that we also get language issues and birdies as well. The film should stick away from those things. It’s a writing issue and it’s one of the things that I’m hoping the films can change later on.

That may not seem like a lot of “holes” as I put it, but they are so frequent that there may as well be a dozen issues with it. The film simply can’t control itself. The main villain is also rather unlikable. He’s another guy who’s really just interested in getting rich and getting the girl. I would have preferred for him to have just been a good driver who wanted to get rich the quick way. He would still be a villain, but at least he would be someone that you could get hyped to fight.

The cops naturally look pretty bad as this is Brian’s show. A squad of around 20 cars can’t match up against two and they are constantly crashing. The FBI is fooled by the ole switcheroo tactic and they are also kept out of the loop a whole lot. You have to wonder why they always need to ask Brian for help during the beginning of these films, but the latter scenes show why they need him. On their own, they simply can’t stand up to the gangsters.

The final big scene where the heroes summon hundreds of cars is really the definition of plot hax. I really don’t buy that happening for a second. Getting everyone into the garage and into their cars while also allowing enough space for the heroes to fit in and get their car into the middle? That’s way too unpractical and elaborate to actually happen. It’s worse than the heroes constantly betting hundreds of dollars against each other every day. There must be a gold mine around there that we don’t know about.

I still have a problem with such large areas not being covered by the police as well. With their fancy satellites and FBI guys on the case, you would think that underground racing would really be a thing of the past at this rate. Of course, that probably won’t be the case as long as Brian is on the case. After all, he loves a good underground race apparently.

I was pleasantly surprised by one of the detectives making the right call at one point. After being threatened with the rat, he still managed to assemble the cops to have one last clash. I hope that he got his family to safety first so that he could really focus on this issue. It’s still too bad that the cops weren’t more organized, but at least the detective did the right thing. Hopefully he can live safe and sound now.

My main piece of advice for the series would certainly be to include more race scenes. We only got to proper races and one was just a back and forth route so it wasn’t a true race. Car action scenes are okay, but they’re not even close to being as epic as a race. A real race gets your heat pumping and you become ready for more. If the whole film had been epic races like the intro, it could have bumped it up a star. 1 star may not sound like a lot, but it’s something. Improving the races is simply one element to add to the whole. If it can get everything right, soon it could be one of the best racing franchises out there. (In movie world. F Zero and the famous Captain Falcon own the streets otherwise)

Overall, This film was better than the first one. It’s slowly becoming more of a respectable franchise, but it is really slow going. As soon as it gets rid of the suggestive themes and bad writing, the films will begin to rise up rather quickly. As it stands, none of the characters are actually likable. Brian and Roman are charismatic characters and they certainly have personality, but they’re way too into women, which distracts them from their moral compass as well as their job. I look forward to the FBI appearing to hire the heroes once again. I’m not sure when I’ll be seeing the next film, but eventually I’ll be onto the current one. Then we’ll see if it manages to live up to the hype or if the series has not changed quite as much as I hoped.

Overall 3/10

Yugioh Zexal Review

Posted on March 29, 2015 by dreager1

Yugioh is currently the greatest franchise of all time. It has exceled in every area and that is a feat which is nearly impossible to match. It currently possesses the greatest movie of all time and the greatest TV show of all time. Yugioh also has another 9 star show in 5Ds and a great title in the original. The video games have been terrific and R/Duelist ensure that the manga section is elite as well. From this, you can probably see why Zexal has so much pressure on it. Zexal probably has the worst rep from all of the main shows, but it is debatable as many people do not like GX with a passion. Zexal ended up being a great show, but it is safe to say that it could never end up reaching the same level as any of the previous three shows. A fate similar to that if Cardfight G at the moment.

The show takes place many years after 5Ds. Technically, it may not be in continuity, but there are enough nods that we can essentially place it in the timeline. Just in an unofficial way like Avengers Assemble. The story follows a kid named Yuma as he goes through his days striving to high five the sky. He is a terrible duelist, but he never gives up and has a lot of fun. One day, he gets a pendant and a spirit named Astral appears. The spirit has lost his memories and needs to recover the 100 Number Cards to get them back. Naturally, Yuma decides to help and Astral decides to make him a better duelist along the way.

The first arc mainly deals with a large tournament. Mr. Heartland is one of the organizers and it is safe to say that he is corrupt. His boss wants to do something shifty with the numbers and he coerces number hunter, Kite, to join the fray as well. Throw in a bunch of other characters and we’ve got quite a tournament. Can Yuma defeat all of these fighters!?

The second arc deals with the Barian Emperors. They have arrived on Earth and wish to destroy Astral and his world along with him. Yuma will have to level up his dueling abilities even more if he is going to defeat them, but things get personal when he finds out that there may be a traitor or two in his midst. His bonds of friendship are shaken to the core. How can Yuma fight for his friends when they may not even be his friends!? The stakes get higher in this arc and it is also a lot darker. I definitely can’t forget the arc opener…that was intense!

Zexal distinguishes itself from the other Yugioh series with how exaggerated the dueling is. Not that the stakes are the highest or anything like that, but you can do almost anything in a single turn. Need to summon 6-8 monsters at once? Not a problem! Need to do the triple fusion to build the overlay network and summon your favorite monster on the first turn? No worries, you can even deal some damage while you are at it. The combos are seriously overpowered here. It is to the point where you need a dynamite hand from the start or else you are doomed. Luckily, the duelists have luck and Shining Draw skills on their side.

To counter all of the monster combos, we have constant traps at the ready. There are likely more trap battles here than in the rest of the franchise. Duelists are constantly playing spell and trap cards so often that it feels like a classic DBZ fight! “Are you done?” “Almost, but first I activate…” This happens soooo many times during the series. I thought it was overdone, but I suppose that spell and trap cards are fun to use. It makes for sone great boasts during the duel.

There are quite a few deux ex machinas to be found as Yuma will unveil a new card at just the right time! He also got some new cards when he first leveled up into his Super Saiyan form. A pretty good bonus if you ask me! This is regrettable, but I know that it is pretty hard to avoid considering how strong the villains are at times. The new cards are typically fun, which is always good.

The new gimmick that is added to the actual duels is that you can now Exceed summon. It is similar to fusion and it’s almost the same thing. The main difference is that your monsters need to be the same level. You don’t need to tune them or activate a card to fuse the monsters, the levels just have to align and then you’ve got a new monster at the ready to help out! It’s not a bad gimmick and it’s fairly easy to use. It’s a lot better than Cardfight G’s gimmick, but it’s probably not quite as fun as Synchro Summoning. Also, the show’s exaggerated play style points out the holes in this technique as you can seriously take advantage of the new way of summoning. It was still a fun addition to watch while it was around though.

Zexal’s animation is big, bold, and bright. Similar to how the 90’s comics loved their exaggerated panels and colorful designs, Zexal takes a similar approach. Other anime that have basically done this include Saint Seiya Omega and Digimon Fusion. It is certainly not my favorite style and I prefer something more streamlined like Yugioh GX, but I suppose that it works well enough. The animation is still pretty good even if it is not great. Some episodes spared no expense like Kite’s first duel or some of the big budget battles that would pop up now and again. You certainly would not mistake this for being an older title and it took advantage of the many energy attacks that were present. Unfortunately, a lot of the monsters still manage to be in total CGI, which looks significantly less impressive. Nothing beats watching a hand drawn monster appear to take names and beat up on the opponents. It’s a lot more satisfying to watch after all.

Zexal’s soundtrack is certainly one area where it does not impress. Most of the themes are fairly generic and you will forget them very easily. Most of the tunes aren’t bad, but it just felt like no real effort was put into them. That being said, you will probably start to like them by the time you are done with the show. You will have heard them many times after all and since the array of themes is rather limited, they have to keep playing them for each battle.

Kite is the best character of the show so we may as well talk about him first. He is Yuma’s true rival in the show although you can make the case for Shark as well. Kite uses a Photon deck and what is unique about it is that he rarely exceed summons. He prefers to fight with more traditional techniques like tribute summoning. His Neo Galaxy Eyes dragon is a true beast and a worthy opponent to come up against. I liked Kite right from the start and his ability to manipulate the flow of time was excellent. He provided the show with a good enemy and he is probably the only human who was able to help a lot in the final battle while on his own. It doesn’t get much better than facing someone while in outer space!

Shark was Yuma’s first rival although I would argue that Kite fits the roll a little better. Shark duels rather early on in the series, but then he takes a backseat for a while. It is hard to say why, but if just felt like Shark wasn’t around as often as the others until the Barian arc. He did have quite a few important duels and he was in the climax so I am not sure why I get that feeling. Either way, by the end of the series he is easily in second or third as far as the most influential characters go. (Minus Astral)

Shark is a good rival. He lost rather quickly as a lot of shows like to have the hero beat the rival in the first episodes, but things went up for him from there. He was definitely one of the more likable heroes. Then, the final arc happened. Let’s just say that the “I fight for my friends” idea was thrown out the window. Shark was torn between his loyalties to Earth and his real home. Ultimately, he decides to choose the latter and that would have been ok if handled differently.

The problem is that there is no good reason for Shark’s last few decisions. He wants to protect some people, but he is conveniently forgetting that those people have been causing damage and mayhem in the city. He should also know that Yuma and co are not planning on doing anything drastic so they could all talk about this. Unfortunately, Astral is also very frustratingly extreme on the issue, which does not help. The whole climax could have been avoided if Shark had simply agreed with Yuma. That way everyone would coexist in peace. Astral’s clan wanted war as well, but it would be easy for Yuma to calm them down since he did save them a while back. Ah well, Shark still proves himself to be a very good duelist and he still did help out a lot. He is easily one of the best heroes for the first arc and he is an intimidating fighter in the final one. We can’t really call him a hero anymore though since he destroyed another hero and attempted to destroy an entire race.

Yuma is the main character of the show and he upholds the tradition of most Yugioh leads having a name that begins with a Y. Jaden may have not confirmed to this tradition, but he is Jaden. His skills allow him to write his own legacy. Yuma is pretty bad at dueling when the show first starts. He is probably worse than normal Yugi was at the time although it is probably debatable. As the series progresses, Yuma becomes a pro in his own right. I would certainly still consider Yugi, Jaden, and Yusei to be better duelists, but Yuma’s deck is probably better than Yugi’s (Minus the God Cards) and Yusei’s. Yuma’s many variations of Utopia will serve him well. Yuma’s deck has an incredible number of cards as new ones keep on popping up whenever he is in a pinch.

Yuma is the only lead in Yugioh who gets multiple super forms as the series progresses. His first form is probably the best as he becomes a Super Saiyan! That was definitely pretty awesome. Naturally, his forms come with their own special abilities like Shining Draw. Shining Draw is very useful as it allows you to draw any card that you want. This naturally shifts the balance of power in any duel. I am inclined to believe that Yuma also gets a degree of flight, super strength, and speed, but it is a little hard to verify.

As for his personality, Yuma is a decent lead. I prefer my main characters to be more confident and talented, but Yuma still has other good traits. He never gives up on his friends as shown in his final duels with Vector, Shark, and Astral. He’s definitely a hero and Yuma would never destroy a villain. He tries to see the good inside of every character. Yuma may take it to extremes, but at least you know that you can certainly trust him in a pinch! When he is serious, Yuma can be a real threat as a duelist and his skill progression was handled rather well. If he could have fewer comic relief scenes at times, he would be an even better lead.

Astral is a ghost who accompanies Yuma for the duration of the series. He lost his memories and he needs Yuma to get them back. The two heroes have a number of good adventures, but Astral still keeps his original goal in mind. He wants the complete destruction of Barian World. Nothing Yuma says will change his mind so they eventually engage in a duel. It is rather disappointing to see how low Astral has gotten in that final duel. There is a twist which suggests that Astral may have just been testing Yuma, but I still wonder about that. If Yuma had not that the proven the heart of the cards was with him, I think we may have had to say goodbye to Barian World.

Astral’s gimmick is that he’s new to Earth so he asks a lot of questions and makes observations. I don’t tend to care for a character like that and Astral may be a pro, but he’s the kind of guy who rarely makes his own decisions and simply listens to the corrupt men in charge. He never ended up being a good character for me, but he could have been a lot worse. At least he fought when the going got tough.

Dr. Faker was one of the first big villains of the series. He was never a favorite of mine, but he had a pretty nifty super form. He also gave us one of the best battles of the series, which was a lot of fun. That being said, he just didn’t have a great design and lacked the personality needed to make a villain really threatening. I would say that Vetrix was an improvement, but not really. Zexal really struggled with the villains in the first part of the series. Vetrix’s voice took away any mystery that he could have had. His deck was pretty handy though and it was certainly dangerous. That just didn’t make him a great villain.

I’m afraid that Yuma’s friends weren’t great. Bronk was your average bully who wasn’t good at dueling, but eventually became Yuma’s friend. Unfortunately, his skills never got better. Flip, Caswell, and Cathy were around, but they never helped out or became likable characters either. Tori is the main heroine of the series and she does her best to cheer Yuma on, but the show missed its big opportunity by never really letting her duel. This means that she was relegated to the background and never had much of an impact on the story.

Rio is Shark’s sister and she doesn’t really get to appear until the start of the second part of the show. She is a very good duelist and a nice supporting character to have around. Finally, we had a friend who could duel! Unfortunately, that was around when the twist about the Barian Emperors came around so her days as a hero were very limited. She was a tough duelist until the end though and her ice deck was fun.

Dextra was one of the allies/rivals from the early part of the series along with Nistro. They faded away in the final arc, but they still tried to help. Dextra was a good character although she never got to do all that much and her overall fight record wasn’t that great. Nistro talks a good game, but his actual skills aren’t quite as good as he would like to think. He still put up a good fight against one of the Barian Emperors, but he was doomed from the start.

Quattro tries to be like a rival to Shark in the series. He doesn’t duel the guy enough for us to really count it, but that’s what his personality is like. He mellows out after the first arc though and manages to be more likable than Trey, but not quite as cool as Quinton. It’s almost hard to imagine how he could have become so nice after he was so evil at first, but it just shows that he had some fast character development. He was a fun supporting character.

I didn’t really care for Trey though. He was the nice guy of the group, but he was tricked rather easily and this leads to disagreements with Yuma. He does help Yuma out of a few jams though so his helpfulness should not be overlooked. Most of the other heroes aren’t quite as useful when push comes to shove. Quinton is still the best of the group and it isn’t just because he has one of the coolest number cards. He’s a good duelist right up until the end and he puts up a good fight against Mizar, which is more than most of the other characters can say. He has an air of confidence about him and that makes Quinton a worthy hero to have on one’s side.

Dumon is one of the nicer Barian Emperors. He’s actually very reasonable and if the other emperors weren’t always looking for a fight, the heroes could have likely made peace through him. It wasn’t to be though and unfortunately, Dumon is also one of the weaker ones. His deck simply wasn’t very imaginative, but his design was cool. Mizar is easily one of the cooler Barian Emperors and I remember how epic his first appearance was. After having to watch Girag for so long, I was thrilled to have someone around who could fight. It was also the first time that Shark, Kite, and Yuma had gathered together in quite a while. Mizar’s Galaxy Eyes made for a great monster and while he may have been cannon fodder for the final boss, Mizar never backed down.

Girag is one of the Barian Emperors and he’s one of the main reasons why the show got off to a slow start at first. (Minus the first episode) It’s really hard to take him seriously and he’s actually a fairly weak duelist. His number isn’t very impressive and he spends a lot of time getting taken out or simply relying on minions. It’s a good thing that he had other emperors to back him up. Alito was a decent one who used to be a bit of a boxer. His deck was the most normal out of the emperors as he didn’t rely on a lot of fancy tricks to win. He simply hit hard and hit fast. Alito’s certainly a little gullible and it can be sad to see him turn on Yuma so suddenly, but he ultimately realizes that he has to fight to win. Behind Mizar and Vector and Nash and Rio……he is the best one…which is sort of saying something right?

We also can’t forget Dark Astral. He was a pretty fun villain to have. It was also a fun plot since we didn’t know that numbers could have a will of their own before that moment occurred. He got several power ups and proved to be a thorn in the side of the heroes for quite some time. I liked his character a lot and his ending wasn’t very satisfying, but you certainly can’t say that he didn’t have a lot of action before that. He got to fight quite a few times and he displayed a whole lot of power while he was around. He was a very threatening villain to be sure.

Eliphas was one of the big members of Astral World and the only one who could fight aside from Astral. His design was very good and you could certainly tell that he was a threat to any duelist. His cards weren’t very overpowered or anything, he was simply a very good duelist. It was fun to see him upgrade his monsters over and over again to be sure. He’s a rather unreasonable character and one of the main reasons why Astral ended up making some bad decisions. I certainly can’t call Eliphas a hero, but he made for a fun villain although his appearances were brief.

Mr. Heartland is one of those characters who will leave you in suspense for a while. He appears a lot in the show, but he rarely ever gets to duel. He gets an intriguing super form in Zexal II, but it certainly didn’t help me become a fan of him. He was another uninteresting villain. Meanwhile, Yuma’s Dad seemed like a good character, but his plot never really went anywhere. It seems like he’s still alive of course, but he just never checks in on Yuma. He prefers to help from the shadows, but he certainly could have helped the heroes save the planet if he had wanted too. I’m not sure how much of a duelist he is, but I’m willing to bet that he was a powerful one.

Vector is one of the biggest villains and also one of the best ones. He uses trickery to make the heroes lower their guards before striking. He’s an excellent duelist as well so you shouldn’t underestimate him either. In terms of raw power, he was easily one of the biggest threats that Yuma had to face. It’s a good thing for the hero that they’re just facing each other in a duel right? Vector spends most of the season pretending to be Yuma’s ally and his scheme works rather well. It’s pretty disheartening for the heroes to find a traitor in their midst, but that’s just how smooth Vector is. His Barian form was certainly cool. Shark should have been a little more alert when around this guy, but in the end, the heroes were ready for his tricks. Without him, it would have been very hard to have taken the Barian Emperors seriously. I’d say that Shark is still the best villain, but it’s between Vector and the upcoming villain for second place.

Don Thousand is the ultimate villain of this series and he was an epic way to end the series. He wasn’t the actual final boss that Yuma had to face, but he felt like it. His true form looks like something you would see out of Toriko and his deck doesn’t disappoint in how powerful it is. Don Thousand can actually rewrite reality thanks to one of his spell cards so he can change your card into another one. It’s the kind of ability that is almost impossible to stop and it’s a lot of fun to see how powerful a card can be. He can certainly hold his own against any other final boss in the Yugioh franchise and he’s also one of the cooler ones. It was seriously fun to watch him duel.

One area where Zexal surpassed the other Yugioh series was in how many filler or “filler” episodes that it had. Some of the battles may have technically been important for the number cards, but they were effectively filler. This happens for most of Yuma’s early tournament battles as well as his early days and even the Barian Emperor had some when Yuma had to fight random people who were taken over by Barian Force. The filler episodes certainly slowed the pacing down and weren’t as exciting as the big episodes. As such, you need to be a big fan of the actual dueling or that will hurt the experience for you a bit. We have a whole episode about Yuma dueling a guy who liked tomatoes and Yuma has to eat them during the duel. It’s pretty surreal.

As with most Yugioh series, the tone is very light at first, but then things get serious towards the end. It’s almost a tradition at this point that the whole supporting cast has to be eliminated towards the end. It happened in GX, and now it happened here. Okay…that’s two out of 4 series, but we’ll see what happens once Arc V arrives. Either way, the stakes were certainly very high. Perhaps not quite as much as GX, which was the original, but still higher than you would have guessed from the beginning.

The climax of each arc is also pretty great as you would expect. I actually preferred the first big battle as it was Kite, Shark, and Yuma against the villain in season 1. Season 2 couldn’t top that so it was just Shark and Yuma against the villain. Still really epic of course, but nothing beats a 3 on 1 duel. The animation and tension greatly improved in Zexal II so it really did put out all of the stops. One of the reasons why Yugioh always has such a great climax is because it already established all of the characters early on in the series. This means that you will be caring about each duel at the end and the stakes keep getting higher and higher. Also, I still have to say that the first episode of Zexal II was brilliant, so brilliant that it holds up against the climax as well.

Zexal is well over 100 episodes, which is a pretty good size. It’s shorter than 5D’s, which was shorter than GX, which was shorter than the original Yugioh, but I’m satisfied as long as we continue to crack 100 episodes. As I already mentioned, it’s not quite as good as the first three shows either, but it’s still a great show. It’s simply tough to top those legends as the first three Yugioh series were basically all stars. The main reason why Zexal can’t top them is because the soundtrack, animation, and duels are typically not as good as say, 5D’s. Ah well, it’s not the newest kid on the block now so a little pressure will leave it for a while.

Overall, Yugioh Zexal is a great show despite its flaws. It easily cracked the 8 stars rating and exceeded expectations that may have been had after the first episodes. We got lot of great duels. The animation was very good and the soundtrack had some good moments although it was certainly unimpressive. Zexal may be at the bottom of the hill for now, but once Arc V starts in America, it should be able to move up a spot. At the very least, I don’t see it passing Zexal until it has 50+ episodes. If you liked the other Yugioh titles, I recommend this one. The card fighting can be a tad exaggerated in their constant traps, but it will be a long, yet fun ride. Even if you just want a fun action title that is fairly light, this is a good bet. Watch out for the statue reference to GX.

Overall 8/10

Stealth Review

Posted on March 27, 2015 by dreager1

Time to review a film that’s a lot more fun. It still has its flaws to be sure, but Stealth excels in two areas to an extent that is almost unprecedented in live action world. That’s not bad eh? The poster looks pretty intense and it makes you wonder why more people didn’t see the film. It certainly could have used the extra cash so that it wouldn’t flop in the box office.

Ben, Kara, and Henry are the main characters. They’re the three best pilots that we’ve got and these guys don’t mess around! One day, their commander announces that they will be getting a new partner. The twist is that the partner isn’t actually alive and it’s just a sentient A.I. That was certainly pretty scary for the heroes and can they really get along with this thing. Even more important…can they trust it!?

First off, I have to say that the three main characters were not great. Henry seems to be sexist and you have to love how he quickly mentions the race card as one of his first lines. It’s very intriguing. Either way, any chance that he had of being a good character is quickly wiped out when he realize that he’s just interested in having affairs with as many people as possible. That’s a sure way to be an unlikable character. Ben isn’t much better. He’s also a womanizer who eventually starts to develop feelings for the heroine. It’s really unbelievable and it’ll just make you wince. It’s sad because he has some cool moments like when he almost attacks the drone and the ending, but it’s hard to ignore the traits that he had earlier. It was simply too late for him. It’s hard to see what Kara sees in Ben and she does realize that he’s a womanizer. There’s almost no way she can trust him emotionally. It’s better to just stay as comrades and not take the extra step sometimes.

Let’s quickly talk about some of the positives. The action scenes are some of the best in cinema. These are Matrix/Man of Steel type of action scenes. Everything moves by very quickly and I can honestly say that modern action films can still learn a thing or two here. Imagine how epic it would look if Iron Man vs Ultron looked like these scenes in Age of Ultron. The Jets are breaking the soundbarrier left and right and the scenes really get your blood pumping. I still think Man of Steel wins as far as action scenes go, but in terms of pure speed it’s actually close. That’s extremely impressive for Stealth and I could not get enough of the cool plane scenes. If the new Top Gun film coming out looks this impressive I’ll have gained a lot of respect for the plane fighting genre. Still, all movies need to take a look at this and apply it when necessary. At the very least, films like The Flash, Shazam, Ms. Marvel, and Superman should always look like this. Superman already pulled it off so now it’s time for the others to do so as well.

That was one big positive and now it’s time to look at the other one. This film has a dynamite 5 star soundtrack. It’s almost perfect and it’s easily a contender for best soundtrack of all time. The impressive part is that this film was able to reach those heights with lyrical songs. If you know me, you know that I tend to prefer instrumental because lyrical songs tend to be edgy at times or the lyrics are simply not engaging. Here, they only picked snippets from various songs so I can’t actually recommend the whole song, but the parts that were used (Minus the rap song) were very good. Ben actually gets a nifty action song when he appears in the jet and likewise for various fight scenes. As a nice change of pace, we also got a cool techno/stealth theme, which worked very well for the mysterious moments.

It’s certainly not every day that you get a film where the special effects are through the roof and accompanied with a great soundtrack. Man of Steel accomplished that, but the film is certainly legendary. The film also took the high road when it came to the animal violence issue. The dog ran away instead of getting shot and I can imagine that everyone in the theater stood up and cheered when this happened. It was simply an intense scene that was extremely epic and awesome.

All right, it’s time to look at the negatives. The romance is one of them for sure. We get some pretty sad scenes involving Ben and Henry as they flirt with various women. There’s no depth here and it’s all about physical attraction. The actual romance between Ben and Kara also isn’t handled well and I don’t see why it was included in the film. It was really only there to fill the quota that every film should have romance in it. That’s what Hollywood seems to believe at any rate and that’s pretty sad.

Stealth has a pretty boring moment where the heroes decide to head to an island for some R n R. They need the vacation at this point right? It’s really just an excuse for more romance and fanservice so it’s pretty sad. We really didn’t need a breather like that one. Some parts of the film also felt rather random like when some enemies took over a lab belonging to Mr. Orbit. Where did these guys come from and what do they want? It’s a good thing that Ben had his drone at the ready.

Speaking of which, the drone made for a great bad guy. He had an epic design and his strategic planning was intense. As a villain, he really knew what to do and how to keep things impersonal. He does have emotions unlike most A.I. which is also impressive. The whole film is basically on auto pilot so everything moves by very quickly. This is a good thing as the film gets to be more ambitious than usual. Typically, the A.I. will turn evil and the heroes will destroy it. What if, the A.I. turns evil, but then sees the error of its ways? It’s something that’s never really been done before and it’s nice to see this film take that approach. It may seem rather hollow since the A.I. destroyed around 1000 people with nuclear fallout though. I thought that part went by a little too smoothly. The people in that area certainly weren’t expecting to be dead so quickly. The drone ultimately tried to make up for this though and I think he really could have become a great hero for future films if he had stuck around.

I was also expecting Ben to try and avenge one of his comrades. (Who died in a pretty bad way. They told him to slam on the brakes, but he wouldn’t listen…at all. It was clear what the drone was trying to do and he simply didn’t listen) When he fired the missile, I thought it was game over, but Ben is just a forgiving kind of guy I suppose. He was against the drone idea from the start, but he seemed to warm up to the drone by the end. You could almost say that they became friends at that point. The drone does sound a little like Hal 9000, which is pretty cool. He also had character from the start and he adopted the name of “Tin Man” since the heroes kept calling him that.

The acting in this film could be rather bad at times like when the hero yelled at the drone not to make him repeat himself, but acting is an extremely low priority on what I’m looking for in a film so this isn’t too bad. If it’s something distracting or seriously messed up, then it’ll start to hurt the bottom line. One scene that was unintentionally funny was when the general called his politician. He made a crazy speech about what separates warriors from politicians and then he pulled the trigger. You can guess what he was essentially saying, but the scene just felt off. The general was probably insane by the end and he’s a villain to be sure, but it was still an odd end. The politician also got the shaft here as he barely got to appear.

One plot that was not quite as fun as the others was when Kara landed in North Korea. Naturally, there are still a lot of tensions between our two countries and it’s always satisfying to see the U.S. come out on top, but it was rather unnecessary. That bit of the plot really came out of nowhere. I have fun looking into how people predict World War III would play out and an unfortunately large group of people do believe that we would lose, but I’d invite them to watch this film. Perhaps this is how it would go. There’s practically a mini army after Kara and they still have a tough time trying to stop her. Imagine what a whole squad of U.S. troops could do. It’s sad that the government left her for lost there, but at least Ben manned up and went in to save the day.

This may not be a horror film, but there is a twist ending. I won’t say what it is, but let’s just say that it’s pretty intense and perfectly leads into a sequel. Unfortunately, we’ll likely never get a sequel. Ah well, at least the film got to go off with a bang. If it ever did get a sequel, I’d like to see the drone and Ben team up against aliens. That would make for a solid story and it would certainly be engaging for new viewers.

Overall, Stealth was a fun film. I definitely wish that the fanservice was gone and the romance wasn’t handled very well. Taking away those two features would have greatly helped the film. After all, the special effects were out of this world and the soundtrack was dynamite. That’s a winning combo for most films, but it’s one that is very hard to actually achieve. The pacing is also really good aside from the brief rest stop at Thailand. Everything just goes by really quickly, which allows the film to go through many plots and a lot of different action segments. We never got the fight between Ben and the drone that we wanted, but we came close in several scenes. The ring of fire that the drone made was cool and it was also neat to see him figure out how to attain fuel the hard way. I definitely recommend this film. You should be wary of the fanservice since it can be rather overwhelming, but once you get past that you are in for an action treat. I don’t think we’ll see any airplane film have better fights than this one for quite a while.

Overall 6/10

Unbreakable Review

Posted on March 18, 2015 by dreager1

It’s time to look at a superhero film that doesn’t involve good ole DC or Marvel. Naturally, that can be a little dicey at times since we don’t have the tried and true Stan Lee to ensure that character development goes well. Unfortunately, my fears were realized as the film quickly crashed once the superhero element began. Seriously, the film was good for over 60% of its run time, but then everything went downhill from there!

David works as a security guard and he’s pretty good at his job. One day, he is approached by Elijah, a man who claims that David may have the uncanny ability of being unbreakable. David cannot get sick and Elijah is on the opposite end of the spectrum as his bones break at the slightest touch. David is intrigued, but he doesn’t know what to do about all this. Ah well, he has about an hour-90 minutes to decide where he goes from here.

All right, here’s why the superhero part failed. The film decided to go for grit and darkness instead of actually providing us with a real threat. David can see the past, which is one of the worst powers that you can think of since he will know that things have happened to people, but he can’t stop them. Conveniently, he sees a problem that he can still help with, but the damage has been done and that’s why the film sunk. The film showed us a bunch of grim happenings that happened to the characters around the lead and there’s no need for it. Assault, Rape, Murder, you basically see all of that and the main character can’t do anything about this. As far as I am concerned, that destroyed any chance that the film had of being even somewhat decent.

David attacks the murderer and defeats him, but the film didn’t need to show us the other situations. If they had to display his ability to see the past, they should have just showed us people stealing jewels or robbing a hot dog stand. Minor crimes would give us the same image without just being dark to be dark. It’s a lesson that more films could definitely learn if they want to succeed the way that Bonds Beyond Time did.

The final fight is actually pretty humorous because of how it happens. Let’s just say that it’s hard to know what the director was going for here. David has been shown to be able to bench press over 350 pounds so we know that he has some degree of super strength. And yet…he can barely take out the average thug. He gets the guy into a choke hold and then they wrestle for an awkward 5-10 minutes. The guy simply won’t go down and David looks extremely unimpressive. Naturally, David decides not to take any prisoners so he pulls a Man of Steel on us. Yeah, this guy’s going to end up being more like the Punisher than a real hero at this rate. He also lost round 1 when he was simply pushed into a pool.

Again, every bit of the superhero part of this film was pretty bad, but it was actually good before that. Elijah’s backstory was pretty sad, but we got to see him make it through that in one piece and own an art gallery. He was pretty unreasonable, but the scene of him defending comics as actual art was pretty funny. Elijah was a decent character for a while. The ending makes him very unlikable of course and the way that he trashed the comic store was completely uncalled for. So, he had his moments in the film, but he could have been better. Considering his condition, he shouldn’t be much of a threat to David.

As for David, I guess he’s a decent character although he’s rather slow on the uptake at times. He just spends a lot of time dragging things out and being rather indecisive. I find it hard to believe that he simply forgot about his past. You don’t really forget events like that and how has he never realized that he had super strength? A bit of a stretch in those areas, but he tries to be a nice guy. The main outlier is the opening scene where David decides to flirt and hides his wedding band. That made him pretty despicable. For most of the film, he’s certainly not a bad character, but you can’t easily forget such a scene. David gets some development later on, which possibly counteracts the scene. Hopefuly..he just needs to work on improving himself a bit. That shouldn’t be a problem. Once he is used to being a hero, maybe he’ll remember that you have to be heroic and take the villains to the authorities to qualify.

David’s kid is a pretty annoying character I’m afraid and he shows why kids should never be main or supporting characters in any films. His decision to shoot David to prove that he was a superhero is pretty crazy and he should know that with great super strength doesn’t always come great durability. The kid certainly hasn’t been keeping up with the comics even though he owns some action figures. There was an odd romance going on between David and the heroine, but it didn’t have a place in the film and it makes you wonder what the point of it all was. They are already married so that subplot could have just been terminated before it even began.

The film isn’t great with pacing. There are many points in the film where it is clearly stalling to inflate the run time. This film could have easily happened in closer to 70 minutes as we have almost half an hour of fluff. David just thinking or other characters standing still and waiting to be blown away. The film needed to move a little quicker and show us that there was still a point to all of this. The problem is that there isn’t much to the plot if they played it straight. It was a little convenient how the characters found out about David’s weakness and it would have been more natural if they hadn’t found out until he fell in the pool. It would have been a big “Connect the dots” moment and more of a shocker that way. Not really a negative though, just a different path that it could have taken.

Overall, Unbreakable is a classic example of what happens to a film without an end goal in mind. Once David became a superhero, the film fell apart very quickly. If it had just stuck to being a suspense thriller, it really could have gone far. As it stands, you are better off checking out Man of Steel or the Avengers. Those superhero films are always ready for action and they will inspire you to see other superhero films while this one can just make you avoid them. I can’t say that I would hold out much hope for a sequel being good, but you never know. Either way, the next time you want something that is unbreakable, I recommend buying some Jaw Breakers! (Disclaimer, those candies are choking hazards and are as tough to chew as they are delicious to eat)

Overall 2/10

Dracula Untold Review

Posted on March 17, 2015 by dreager1

It’s time to check out a film with vampires in it! That’s typically a bad sign for me to be honest since vampires = blood sucking which = instant loss. Luckily, that doesn’t really happen much until the end of the film, which is a big plus. It’s still filled with enough negatives to fill a bowl of mashed potatoes, but it’s a start and a franchise with this film at the center could be pretty decent. It should also be noted that the poster for this film is pretty incredible!

Dracula grew up as a nice guy until he was sold to the villains. He helped them destroy hundreds/thousands of opponents and then left to rule his homeland. Well, the villains are back and they want most of the youth along with Dracula’s son. Dracula quickly slays the minions who report this and prepares for war. If he is to beat an army, he will need some extra power! (Especially since Dracula’s allies are extremely weak) Dracula heads to a mountain where an old vampire gives him vampire abilities. This is how the legend of Dracula begins! The change will not be permanent if Dracula can resist the urge of blood for 3 days. Can he really win the war in that time? Let’s hope so!

Considering that this film is about Dracula, I think it’s safe to say that we know the answer to that last question. Still, he tries pretty hard not to give in to the temptation and he certainly had the potential to win the war in 3 days. His strength and speed were greatly enhanced and this could be one of the strongest incarnations of Dracula that we have seen. He can manipulate the weather and his super speed allows him to take down dozens of opponents in an instant. That is certainly a feat that one can respect.

All right, let’s go into the negatives before we look at the rest of the film. It was teetering on the edge between 3-4 stars, but one area ended up plunging it down. I nearly forgot about it at first, but the film has quite a few romance scenes that do not age well. The film isn’t that old, but the writers may already realize the problem here. There’s no point to the scenes with Dracula and his wife as they don’t impact the plot. It’s also not a good or developed romance as they just make out with each other for no reason. That’s the kind of romance that will hurt any film and this one is no exception.

The next negative would be the classic animal violence part. A dog is attacked in the background. Again…there is no reason for this! We also watch as a spider catches his prey and there’s no need for this as well. Unfortunately, this is where we get to the blood sucking part and it’s no better than usual. It’s pretty gross to see Dracula drink the blood from a cup from the get go, but it’s even worse once he starts to bite his opponents and steal their strength. Dracula even goes as far as to bite someone who was already dying for his extra bit of power. His excessive biting eventually backfires on him, but he really over did it.

The fight scenes were better than anticipated at first. Dracula was finishing everyone off, but it wasn’t in an unnecessarily gritty/violent way. That changed for the climax as it went all Lord of the Rings/Prince Caspian on us. The heroes were biting all of the villains that they could find and then we remembered that there were no more heroes. They were all gone or corrupted by this point. The film definitely lost steam by the end.

Still, the film does end on a great note. Not just a good note, but a great one as we see the true potential of this new universe. The ending involves a certain character in the modern world. A necessary step if we are to have a shared universe after all and then we see the big villain. Presumably, he shall be the big threat in the first crossover film. He states that the games will now begin and you can’t help but feel excited for what may come next. There appears to be a war between two immortal figures. We know that one of them is the old vampire and he has already recruited Dracula to his side. (Dracula has no choice in the matter) I’m speculating that Imhotep is the other one and maybe he’ll recruit a Werewolf or Frankenstein. Then we’ll have the biggest fight on our hands since Batman vs Superman! Of course, we need the shared universe to really start if that’s to happen so they’re going to need to hurry with that. If they back off now, that’ll be sad for the fans!

There’s not much of a soundtrack to be found here I’m afraid. The effects are decently good and it’s fun to see Dracula in his bat form. How likable is Dracula as a character? He’s actually good for a while and I can sympathize with his desire to protect his people at any price. That being said, he should have easily ended the war right away. When it was night time, he should have headed straight for the opposing king after messing up the enemies. He also could have done a better job commanding the troops and letting them know of his abilities so that others could not spoil the opportunity for him. It’s pretty terrible that the people were so scared of him when they found out, but that’s the casual observers for you. They simply were not ready. Dracula was also very powerful before he became a vampire, which was certainly a welcome twist. He made the right decision when he didn’t hand over his son.

The final battle between Dracula and the human is riddled with plot hax all around, but the important thing is that he still won. The film had to make the clash dramatic somehow, but they should have simply thought of another way. I’m sure they could have made it a little more believable if they really put their mind to it. It was interesting to see the main villain because he looks a lot like Howard Stark from Agent Carter. I couldn’t help but think of the guy whenever the villain appeared so it was always humorous to see him. The characters are stark contrasts of each other after all.

There’s not much of a cast here though since almost all of the other characters don’t actually get any personality. They’re just here to talk big or to lose dramatically. The ending proves that none of them have any strength of will and most of the heroes are traitors anyway. The only one Dracula can count on is himself. There’s an odd guy who follows Dracula around and wants to be his servant. The guy just didn’t make any sense as he wanted to help Dracula one moment and destroy him the next. He seriously needed to make up his mind!

I give the film some props for its mention of Heaven considering how much Hell is discussed. Dracula says something along the lines of “Now that I know Hell is real, I know Heaven exists as well” when a certain someone dies. The Cross also continues to have power over the vampires once they have consumed human blood. It’s always good to see those influences here since horror films tend to only show you half of the equation. It’s not much, but it’s a start!

Overall, Dracula Untold suffered from the negatives that follow just about any vampire film, but it did have some enjoyable moments. The ending really leaves it with a lot of potential for a good sequel and the film did a good job of making Dracula more likable and sympathetic than usual. Unfortunately, the romance, animal violence, and blood sucking ensure that I cannot recommend this film. If you want to see a good horror film that doesn’t even try to take itself seriously, go check out Scooby Doo Frankencreepy. If you want to see something with Dracula in it, I recommend waiting for the (possible) sequel or maybe checking out The Batman vs Dracula if you’re feeling bold. Finally, I know you have one more question. Could Dracula defeat the Avengers? The sad answer is…yes…yes he could. At least, the movie versions, but we’ll see if I still think this once Age of Ultron comes out!!!

Overall 3/10

Spawn Review

Posted on March 6, 2015 by dreager1

It’s time for a triple horror review on the blog. Not in one post of course, but I’ll be posting them consecutively as I get to work on the film backlog. The third film review isn’t technically horror, but it’s a tragedy, which shares many of the same qualities as a horror. Why not right? All right, back to Spawn! This is one of those films that had an incredible premise, an awesome poster, and yet you knew that it wouldn’t be a very good film. Probably not even a good one. Well, your fears were well founded as this title shows why it will always be known as one of the weaker superhero films.

Al worked as a hit man of sorts for a shady company. He took out threats to the country in secrecy. One day he finally realized just how much collateral damage he was dealing to the outside world during this chaos and decided to fight back. He told his boss that he would quit so the boss had his replacement shoot him with more holes than a chunk of Swiss Cheese. The joke was on the boss though as Al was sent back to Earth from Hell so that he could lead the demon’s army against Earth. No worries though, the demons will allow Al to get his vengeance first!

It’s hard to know where to start first for a film like this one so let’s just look at things from the demon’s point of view first. After all, his plan doesn’t make a great deal of sense. For starters, why did Al have to lose his memory of the deal that he made in Hell when he went back to Earth? If not for the clown, AKA, The Violator, he would not have known to lead the armies anyway. Al was incredibly mixed up for a great chunk of the film and it felt like the villains almost didn’t care. That was rather sloppy and if Al has retained his memories from the start, he may have stayed on the path of darkness. Their loss I suppose.

One of the big weaknesses of this film is the..crude humor! Trust me, that’s the last thing that you want to see in a super hero film that’s supposed to be really dark and gritty. A little crude humor doesn’t tend to phase me, but it was extremely over the top and very cringe worthy. The scene where the clown bites into a certain slice of pizza is really what did it for me and you really will feel like losing your lunch. If the film was trying to be original, it may have succeeded, but certainly not in a good way.

The clown is also an example of another poor character. All of his scenes are pretty bad and some of his lines are pretty terrible. His threats to Al may be pretty personal, but it just makes him a rather despicable villain, not a likable one. You will certainly be pulling for Spawn to take him down already. The Clown also isn’t an incredibly impressive fighter, it’s just that Spawn isn’t very strong here. He definitely has a lot of work to do if he wishes to master his abilities. I could have definitely preferred another sidekick to help Spawn instead of this guy.

Okay, let’s back up a bit and look at some of the film’s pros. Spawn is a pretty likable character. It’s good that he wanted to get out of the shady business and he ultimately decides to act in the name of justice over being an emissary from Hell. Given his circumstances, it certainly shows a lot of willpower. In the hands of a better writer, he could have been a great protagonist. As it stands, he was simply a good one. He did make all of the right choices after all. Spawn can be rather slow on the uptake and it takes him a very long time to even think of using some of his abilities, but he would likely have been much more powerful in the sequel. A shame that we’ll never get one for this film…..or not.

Another big positive is the soundtrack. It’s easily one of the greatest comic book soundtracks of all time. I definitely prefer the instrumental themes though since that’s where all of the real action is at. The rock/metal themes really get your heart pumping and you’ll be ready to see what kind of action scenes they throw at you. I haven’t heard a film with fight themes like this since Mortal Kombat and Man of Steel! (Man of Steel had one good battle theme anyway!)

I can’t really complain about the fights either. They holds up pretty well. Spawn’s fight with the Violator will remind you of Spidey’s recent clash against the Lizard in TASM while Spawn’s epic fight against the master demon is something that is very original. Most of the fight is in CGI, which actually works quite well since it looks like a video game. I was loving every second of that fight and Spawn definitely got some good durability feats as he was constantly slammed to the ground and kept on getting back up. He also used his spikes to impale dozens of villains at once, which is something that he’ll get better at as the years go forward. Even Spawn’s quick spar against his replacement is pretty intense. The fight reminded me of Resident Evil…only less graphically intense, which was neat. Spawn definitely knew what it was doing in the action category.

All righty, back to the negatives. So far, this probably sounds like a 5-6 right? Well, we’re bumping it down 2-3 spots from that so we need to figure out why. Wait for it….waiiiiit for it….Animal Violence. Talk about adding insult to injury right? A dog gets punches by the big villain and we see him limping in his next appearance. That’s simply inexcusable and you’ll want to exit the room right after this happens. It really had no place in the film and I don’t see why they would add this. It made things more personal of course, but how much more personal does this have to get before Spawn unlocks his true powers?

Beyond that, the film is pretty tame violence wise compared to what you may expect. Granted, they may have edited out some of the violence on TV, but usually the language is what gets hit the hardest. So, I didn’t find the violence to be that bad. There isn’t really any romance although one of the plots also seems a little crazy. So, Al’s wife moves on to his best friend after he vanished. Really? Sure, he may have been dead, but that’s an incredibly low blow and especially after she said that she would be with him forever. It’s why you’ve always got to be careful before you fall into the romance trap. I’m still glad that it didn’t get more screen time since that could have been dicey.

Another reason why this film simply wasn’t that good is some scenes can drag a bit. The main example of this is when Spawn first returns to the world. He can’t talk so we just see him crawling and walking around as he has no clue what he should do. It’s pretty painful to watch the scenes as the Clown gets to mess with him for a while. I want to see Spawn verbally debating the pros and cons of fighting with a neat cloak, not getting thrown into an alley to get some more sleep!

I think we’ve mostly established why this is a film of missed opportunities. One more thing that needs to be mentioned is the ally who lends his strength to Spawn. This guy pops up out of nowhere and he has some connection to Hell or Heaven. It’s all very vague and he silently threatens to kill Spawn at one point before just joining him into the fray. He looks decent when it comes down to a fight, but he’s also pretty old so he can’t last very long in the heat of battle. He got his moments I suppose, but he really needed some actual character. One minute he’s basically telling Spawn to let his revenge go and then encouraging him to tackle the human villain in the next scene.

Overall, Spawn is a dicey experience. Some scenes can certainly be funny and it actually does work as more of a comedy than a horror. That being said, it goes too far in too many different ways to really be a good film. The animal violence, crude humor, and unnecessary scenes/lines keep it from being the kind of film that you will want to rewatch. The costumes and effects are way ahead of its time, but a film can’t get a good score on good looks. If it could, then I’d expect TASM2 (Electro vs Spidey) to have better scores than most other films. The video game is probably much better than the film, but I can’t really vouch for that. Either way, this is a film that you will want to skip and you’ll be better off watching the first Ghost Rider. It really outranks this title in just about every way.

Overall 3/10

Deltora Quest Review

Posted on March 4, 2015 by dreager1

Deltota Quest is a book series that became a bigger franchise than anyone could have imagined. It got two sequel series, a manga, and a TV show. That is pretty impressive. I read the books and watched the show so now I finally got to check out the manga. It is pretty good, but could it match up to the anime? Let’s take a look at this adaption.

The plot follows a kid by the name of Lief. He lives in the Kingdom of Deltora, unaware that the rest of the planet has been taken over by the Shadow Lord. The only way to stop him is to travel the world and find the missing gems of Deltora. Once united on the belt, they can be used to vanquish the evil being. Lief is joined in his quest by a bodyguard in the form of Barda and a girl in the forest who goes by the name of Jasmine. Let the adventure begin!

The series is 10 volumes long, which is pretty good for the average manga series. It is still a little rushed by the end though, which shows just how much content needed to be covered. There were quite a few gems so the adventures were numerous. Unfortunately, this meant that some of the battles had to be trimmed. Particularly, the final big boss (minus the Shadow Lord) was reduced to a single hit KO. Most of the exposition was kept in and some battles were extended, so it wasn’t all rushed. The series probably would have had a more even pacing if it had been boosted to 12 volumes.

The artwork for the series is pretty intense and the artist must have loved old classics like Yu Yu Hakusho and Kenshiro. You really feel the punches and this is probably Barda’s best portrayal. His fight with Doom is extended and the tournament’s final rounds are turned into a free for all, which allows for more action. The gritty/shonen art works for the fight scenes and while it may be a little generic during the regular scenes, it works well enough. It is a little more violent as a result of this, but certainly nothing compared to the average SJ title. Just watch out for the rats scene as it can be pretty sad.

One thing that you will notice immediately is a large amount of plot hax. The critical mistake that many fantasy series make is to have the lead characters be humans without any special abilities. So, how can these guys take on all powerful beings of darkness or a witch who is protected by a barrier? Bring in the plot hax crew. The witch scene wasn’t that bad as it is the monsters who usually take the fall. They are simply stabbed or are too slow to escape the heroes. The main characters decide to play dead at one point, but things almost don’t work out very well for them as the villains prepare to critically stab them anyway. A sound makes them forget what they were doing, but it is an example of a scene where the heroes were only saved by luck.

Lief is the main lead and he is pretty heroic. He is definitely not the strongest character around, but he knows self defense, which is always a useful skill to have. He has most of the qualities that you would expect to see in a hero and Lief never backs down from a fight. I definitely don’t have a problem with him being the main character, but he could certainly have been a little more interesting. His plans are also some of the worst ones a lead has ever come up with and luck is the only reason why he survives for so long.

Barda is the muscle of the group and he is a talented fighter. Lief never manages to surpass him in the art of fighting, but Barda does have more experience on his side. He gets quite a few fights during the course of the series and Barda definitely ends up being a good character. He is certainly more interesting than Lief, but it is hard to say who is more likable.

Jasmine is the team’s link to nature and she is the quickest fighter of the group. Her big weakness resides in her lack of physical strength. She typically manages to get past this though and her animal friends provide her with some backup. Her initial distrust and aggression regarding the mysterious figure named Doom is a little much as it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but there is a reason for it. I am just not sure if I buy the fact that the plot twist would have caused this.

Beyond those 3 heroes, there isn’t much of a supporting cast. They do gain more allies along the way, but their appearances are sporadic at best. They befriend a boy who has lost the ability to speak. The kid helps them out more than once and the heroes would have been doomed otherwise. The heroes are also helped by a flying creature who fights off a powerful beast. Naturally, Doom also lends a helping hand when the stakes get high and he proves to be a formidable ally. His strength may even be a match for Barda’s.

The villains have less character to speak of since most of them are giant monsters. Aside from the Vraal, I don’t even remember their names. Some monsters were unlikable like the giant Toad, while others were pretty cool like the Vraal. It is definitely a case by case basis and I just wish that the heroes could have gotten some power ups so that the fights would not feel all of the plot hax. There is a traitor and a villain related to Lief’s past, but they were both thrown back into the manga at the last second so it lacks the emotional punch that it could have had. Fans of the Shadow Lord or at least the concept of the big bad may be disappointed by the fact that his screen time is extremely limited. He comes into the picture at the very end of the series and he it outmatched very quickly. The author should probably have given him a fight scene a little sooner so that he could at least get one win before it was all over. The Shadow Lord has a cool design, hopefully that will satisfy you….

I already discussed the artwork, but the fight scenes deserve a paragraph of its own. The artist is pretty good at hand to hand fights as well as sword clashes. This is due to the gritty, detailed style that is used here. It may be counter productive at times for the non action scenes, but the fights make it worth the trade off. Deltora Quest sometimes ends up looking like a classic SJ title when Lief really gets into the heat of battle. The monsters certainly look intimidating and I have always liked the design of the Ols. The fights just feel out of place because they are so serious in what is otherwise a fairly laid back series. I’m certainly all for it!

This is a journey series so you could argue that while the plot is important, you’re really supposed to look at the visuals and that’s how you will find the series to be a lot of fun. Lief helps people from various lands and it really pays off by the end. Some of the quests may seem like filler, but Lief typically gets a gem out of the ordeal so that certainly helps his quest. It’s like LOTR, but in manga form so it is infinitely better.

Overall, Deltora Quest is a good manga. At 10 volumes, it is almost the perfect definition of what a good manga is. We have enjoyable fights, decently interesting characters, no fanservice, (Which is pretty incredible) and some solid artwork to back it all up. It’s a complete package. There are really no big negatives to speak of. It was a little rushed and the rat violence was sad, but that’s about it. The series managed to stay afloat on its positives. This title won’t be making your top 10 or anything like that, but it’ll be a fun read and you can compare it to the books or the anime. There’s just something satisfying about checking something out in all 3 formats. Maybe the manga will get a sequel series to cover the book’s sequel, but the chances are slim. Still, we can hope!

Overall 6/10

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