New Anime Series: Akuma no riddle

April 21, 2014 by Mark Myers Leave a comment

First Episode(s) Review for: Akuma no Riddle

Summary:

A gifted and stone cold young female assassin is sent to a new class at school filled with other killers and one as yet unknown but seemingly obvious victim, all the killers imediatly start to size each other up, but the victom takes a shine to our little stone cold killer 🙂

Animation:

Clear cell animation with a slight hazy over tone, Very good human movements, lots of nice details and subtleties including blinking at times when it not needed, which added a lot of depth to the visualisation.

Plot Potential:

Well I don’t know, on the surface this seems to be a dead simple plot with the hardened heroine falling for the Innocent girl with the hard history, but there are so many lead characters and so many plot twist hints that I have no idea whats going to happen next for example Haru’s “dusty smell”: is that a “sunny smell” as one characters thinks or is the the smells of crypts and things brought back to life

Music:

Hard Rock for both beginning and end, good tunes, the opening will I suspect be listened to about 4 times before I start to skip, the ending maybe twice.

Reminds me of:

Aria the Scarlet Ammo with characters from Deadman Wonderland

Overall:

Riveting if slightly dark watching trying to figure out where this is going as well as the shear enjoyment of them trying to pack so many primary characters in to one anime, it is a bit overwhelming in places and I had a couple of WTF! moments and had to flip back the timeline and watch again, but it has the making of a fun anime, let us hope it lives up to its promise.

Disclaimer: These are mini reviews of anime’s that are fresh out in Japan and are not licensed in the UK, buy them once they have been licensed or at the very least buy the merchandise, remember if the anime makers make a loss, THEY WILL STOP MAKING ANIME!!

New Anime Series: Kamigami no Asobi

April 17, 2014 by Mark Myers Leave a comment

First Episode(s) Review for: Kamigami no Asobi

Summary:

A young shrine maiden who is following the path of the sword rather than getting ready for her entrance exams, is transported by an ancient sword to some form of Hogwarts’s cross with the playboy mansion but for young girls, in this case she is alone with a wide variety of very hot young men and the odd flying horse, it turns out that they are all young gods here to be taught about humans BY humans what could go wrong

Animation:

This series is filled with the clear bright animation that makes me wish I lived in an anime world, not too shinny but just enough so that you think every day will be a bright new future, detail where it needed but not over done or seemingly trying too hard, A very nice middle ground with good use of light.

Plot Potential:

If it’s got a plot I have not yet found one, that might be because I’m rolling around on the floor at the sheer “teenage girls fantasy” nature of the environment, of particular note was the stunned “it’s so big” line when the flying stallion is standing next to the girl..

Music:

Lots of slow piano tinkles going on in the background (I honestly was expecting to hear Barry White a couple of times)

Reminds me of:

Mostly The Wallflower but with the humour and situations of El-Hazard

Overall:

Anime often makes me chuckle in that it is seen to cater only to a male hetero audience but the number of truly beautiful young males is nearly equal to the number of imposable women, and this is a fun example of the former. easy watching

New Anime Series: Captain Earth

April 15, 2014 by Mark Myers Leave a comment

First Episode(s) Review for: Captain Earth

Summary:

The death of his astronaut farther has a detrimental effect on a teenagers life, meaning he is withdrawn despite being quite skilled and popular, when a huge floating rainbow ring appears in the sky he is drawn back to the place in his childhood where he first saw it, oh and chuck in a space princess in a giant pink mecha.

Animation:

Slightly toned down cell animation (the sort they use when try to achieve realism without putting a lot of effort into detail) totally watchable.

Plot Potential:

So what looks at first to be a simple “boy finds secret life in space” starts to look a lot deeper than you would expect, with a lot more threads already coming into play, defiantly not a background series (some people who I thought were good guys already turned into bad guys within 15 mins)

Music:

Moving but not catchy, sounds like they have plundered NASA’s dramatic music store

Reminds me of:

Hard to say really, but you know those series that have a group of children going into an old temple when they are young and it going back to bite them then they are older? That but in space, I suppose like a slow moving and serious Tenchi Muyo!

Overall:

Even though this is a standard plot line, I really enjoyed the variants in it, the hero is not a d**k which always helps and one wonderful old school bonus, the giant machine transformations are truly ridiculous, there is more “clunk clinking” than talking in the first episode, this is a series to watch (and pull the odd Dragon ball Z pose too)

New Anime Series: Dragon Collection

April 11, 2014 by Mark Myers Leave a comment

First Episode(s) Review for: Dragon Collection

Summary:

Young and gutsy boy is pulled into a new video game only to find him self in the real world of said video game, there he saves a defenceless animal who turns out to have great power that comes out when the lad gets drawn into a card duel (dear lord I could just copy and paste this summery is been used so many times)

Animation:

Saturday morning bright and shiny animation, well nicely done, very obviously drawn straight over static back grounds (yes I know nearly all animation is like that but this is quite blatant), its the kind of animation that the other members of the household love.

Plot Potential:

Well its another card game anime, with exactly the plot flow you would expect, as long as you are happy with that you can sit back and enjoy it.

Music:

bouncy bouncy, fun fun fun fun

Reminds me of:

More Monster Rancher than Pokemon and looks more like a version of Magic Knight Rayearth aimed at boys than either of them

Overall:

You never know with these merchandise based anime if they will go the the distance as they are so closely tired to the success of the product they are selling, but while not want I would call gripping , this is the kind of thing I would have loved as a 12 year old lad on Saturday morning and to be fair its still lots of fun and a stress free way to spend 24 mins.

New Anime Series: Blade and Soul

April 7, 2014 by Mark Myers Leave a comment

First Episode(s) Review for: Blade and Soul

Summary:

A silent killer on the run from an empire is hired to defend a village under threat from same said empire, she performs her duty perfectly but will her presence bring down the wrath of the empires own army of Killers? (the answer is Yes)

Animation:

Slightly odd animation, excellent detail and glorious fight scenes, with sharp character design against near watercolour backgrounds and for some reason CGI flags.

Plot Potential:

I have not played the game that the anime is based off but it seems to be giving them plenty of plot to go with and it is moving along fast even on the first episode, it’s rare that I cant treat a game based anime as background but there is simply too much plot (a good thing)

Music:

Tribal fight music, nothing notable and I cant remember any lyrics, suitable but not outstanding

Reminds me of:

Ninja Scroll the series with shades of Fairy Tail and a bit of the story of Scrapped Princess

Overall:

Even before the opening credits it was obvious that this came from either an RPG or a computer game (just too many huge pairs of boobs), but it flows well and if it was not for the slightly suspect number of scantly clad ladies with swords there is nothing that stops it being a full blown plot filled series, I will be watching with interest.