DVD Review - "Shuffle!" presents a mix of boring anime romance

"Shuffle!" is not the best anime of the world. It is not even exciting. It is just a boring romance anime that travels nowhere.

The plot is very, very straightforward. The main character is a high school guy named Rin Tsuchimi. He meets two girls--Lisanthus and Nerine. The former is the daughter of a god and the latter is the daughter of a demon. The next day, he meets their fathers. They inform him that their daughters are in love with him and want to marry him. If he chooses Lisanthus, he gets the power of the gods. If he chooses Nerine, he gets the power of the demon world.

That's the plot. The rest of the story focuses on the two girls trying to get closer to Rin. As you can see, this plot doesn't make for very interesting episodes at all.

Since this anime is based on a dating simulation game, there are more than just two girls vying for his attention. There's Kaede Fuyou, his childhood friend. Her mother and Rin's parents died in a car accident, so Kaede is living with Rin. There's Asa Shigure, a member of the cooking club who slaps Rin on the back for fun whenever she meets him. Finally, there's Primura, a child demon carrying a stuffed animal cat. She's in love with Rin too.

Usually I don't mind anime based on dating simulation games. Although all of the girls tend to focus too much on one guy, some of these anime have gorgeous imagery, or dramatic, unusual plots. However, "Shuffle!" hardly has anything interesting so far. The most exciting parts of this anime occur whenever Nerime, the demon girl, blows up people who try to hurt the guy she loves. Yet, at the same time, she tries to be more ladylike by spending an entire episode learning to cook a lunch for Rin. As much as I appreciate the Japanese tradition of girls cooking lunches for their boyfriends, cooking alone doesn't make for a very interesting episode.

For some reason, there's also plenty of guys trying to beat up Rin for being engaged to the two girls. I don't know why they want to beat him up, but they do. They always appear in every episode to fight Rin, and by the third episode, they are as annoying as the villains Jesse and James in "Pokemon".

The girls don't even show very much passion at all. Compared to the heavily emotional soap opera "Rumbling Hearts", this series is dull. All the girls just try to grab Rin's attention, because of the romantic memories they had with him as a child. The story is terribly illogical. It should be disturbing that this poor guy gets so much attention. For some reason, Rin doesn't mind the attention at all after the third episode.

One of the girls, Asa, hides Rin under a table from the guys who want to beat him up. She then pushes Rin's head between her legs to see her panties. Why does she want to do this? Well, she's in love with him. That's the only reason why all the other girls are rushing to his side. One would think that these girls would be frightened to have Rin in such a position, but they're all mindlessly in love, like robots with nothing better to do.

If you see this anime, steer clear from it. It's boring and repetitive. It offers nothing interesting or new at all. I really hope I don't have to see any more romantic anime such as this one.

Image courtesy of kurogane.animeblogger.net

Next post coming soon

I had to catch up on some of my anime series, so my next blog may come in late.

Stay tuned for reviews of "Welcome to the NHK" volume 3, "Shuffle!", "Devil May Cry: the Animated Series" and "Simoun".

Oh, and of course I have to cover "Gurren Lagann", from the crazy animation director of "FLCL".

DVD Review - The Wallflower serves up shoujo romance with cutting-edge horror

"The Wallflower", Watanabe's first anime adaptation from a manga comic, is a noteworthy series. The hyper-active jokes in this shoujo anime are non-stop, and the characters are more unique that the off-the-wall heroine Excel.

"The Wallflower" stars Kyohei, Ranmaru, Takenaga and Yukinojou, four transfer high-school boys who are looking for a place to stay, nearby their school. They found a luxurious mansion, and they were lucky enough to find a landlord who would let them stay for free if they made her niece, Sunako, a prettier girl in two weeks. And Sunako is actually a gothic recluse girl, who loves to watch horror films and prefers to stay in the darkness. This task seemed impossible, and the landlord often runs away with her boyfriend, leaving the house alone to the four boys.

Fortunately, Kyohei is willing to get the creepy Sunako to act more dignified. He wrestles with her so that he could see her face underneath her long bangs and he tugs her to school. Although Sunako despises Kyohei, and even plots to kill him, she grows to like this boy, even if he has a hard time getting a job.

Although Kyohei and Sunako despise each other, their chemistry is the spotlight of the entire series. Whenever Kyohei gets beaten up by school gangs or yakuza, Sunako explodes in a violent rage, beating up guys and destroying entire buildings. Needless to say, she's definitely not feminine--she's a tough girl. Also, Sunako's nose bleeds every time she gets captivated by a pretty boy or pretty girl's radiant glow. Sometimes blood squirts out in the air, but many times her nose squirts blood into Kyohei's face.

When the landlord discovers that her niece isn't beautiful after two weeks, she asks for the four boys to pay the bills. Kyohei is the money-maker of the group, looking for whatever jobs he can find to pay the landlord. He helps Sunako make her horror booth the most popular in the school festival, in order to earn a prize of 50,000 yen (equal to five hundred dollars). He brings Sunako to a photo shoot, after a photographer fell in love with a photo of her at the school festival. Not to offend Sunako, but I have no idea how he fell in love with that picture.

The anime seamlessly mixes loud metal rock with hilarious sequences, where Sunako is either beating people up or fighting with Kyohei over proper etiquette. The crazy scenario makes for a great comedy series, with a gothic edge, as Sunako whips out a samurai sword to chop off a bully's clothes and chops recklessly at fish in the kitchen (with blood splattering all over) to cook for the four boys. This is just so much fun to watch for its off-kilter atmosphere.

Photos courtesy of randomc.animeblogger.net

DVD Review - Flag presents Middle East War as seen through Japanese eyes

Although many anime series have political overtones in their storylines, very few series present warfare in a realistic portrayal. "Flag" is one of the few anime which take viewers to the front lines of a country similar to Iraq. However, based on what I've seen from volume one, "Flag" also highlights the drastically different viewpoint of the Iraq War through a Japanese perspective.

According to the fictional world of "Flag," Uddiyana is a country in Southeast Asia under political turmoil. After a violent civil war, the U.N.F. finally took over the country and formed a peace treaty between the U.N.F. and the Subashi insurgent group. Saeko Shirasu, a 25-year-old photographer, came with her professor, Dr. Akagi, to take pictures in Uddiyana. During the occupation, Shirasu had taken a photograph of two people praying, silhouetted as a shadow behind the new U.N.F. flag. Ever since she took the photograph, it has been used by the U.N.F. as a symbol of peace between the two countries.

However, a terrorist group of radical Buddhists invaded the U.N.F. embassy and stole the flag. Radical Buddhists. I cannot really fathom that radical Buddhist terrorists would really exist in Southeast Asia. Anyway, the U.N.F. plans to get back the flag as a symbol of their roadmap to peace (sound familiar?). The U.N.F. asked Shirasu if she wanted to join the regiment assigned with mission as an embedded journalist, and she gladly accepted. Dr. Akagi, worried about his student, traveled to Uddiyana to learn more about the insurgent groups of Uddiyana.

While this anime is set in a fantasy world, the world is very similar to the situation in the Middle East. Dr. Akagi visits many groups, such as the Buddhist governing sect, the Gulut, who rules Uddiyana. There are also groups in Uddiyana who believe in Shintoism, but reject Buddhism. Dr. Akagi even meets a young girl who at one point acted as Kuhura the goddess, whom some people in Uddiyana believe in. The animation studio took plenty of time to make this situation as realistic as they possibly could.

The regiment Shirasu was embedded in, however, remains distinctly Japanese. All the soldiers have Japanese mannerisms. Right from the get-go, all the male soldiers stay very generous to female photographer Shirasu, and let her take all the pictures she wants. They even let her plant cameras everywhere, in the helicopters and even in the HAVWC tank. There's no way that an American regiment would actually permit these actions. In spite of this cultural difference, the group is part of a Bush-styled road map to peace, which according to photographer Akagi, seems highly unlikely to succeed.

However, the cinematography style for the anime is the most amazing part of this series. Animated like a documentary, much of the story takes place from the cameras of these two photographers, Dr. Akagi and Shirasu. Movies with audio are filmed through their cameras. The animators even took the effort to tilt the screen to different angles whenever the photographer dangled the camera to her/his side. A computer even handles the ordering of photos and videos into one 25-minute film.

Although some parts of the anime seem a little too unbelievable, especially the demonstrations of the regiment's big walking HAVWC robot, "Flag" still shows a realistic portrait of war like no other anime has done before. The quick gunfire action is brutally intense. The photography is well filmed. And oddly enough, this anime was produced by Answer Studios, a new animation studio. This group already shows plenty of promise with their first DVD of "Flag." Hopefully, they'll produce more cutting-edge anime like this one.

The dub in English is exceptional, although the military commanders' English dubs sound much tougher that the Japanese voices in the subtitled version. The English voices have a rougher, masculine American texture to it. Obviously there are many differences reflected between the two countries in this DVD.

DVD box set - Bebop finally comes out in a box

Good news--Bandai Visual finally released a box set of "Cowboy Bebop!"

Although I loved watching Bebop five or six years ago on the Cartoon Network, I still can't figure out why Bandai took that long to release a box set of all the DVDs in the series. I understand that Bandai wanted to make viewers shell out all their cash to buy the DVDs individually. However, they didn't deserve to make me wait four or five years just for this series in an inexpensive box set! I'm a college student. Bandai deserves to send me, as well as other college students, an apology for forcing me to wait this long.

Still, anime fans have every reason to be fortunate that Bebop finally came out in one box set, because Bebop is one of the best, if not the best, anime series of all time. The series starts with two bounty hunters, Spike and Jet, searching for criminals to turn in to the police. Faye Valentine, Ed, and the Corgi dog Ein later join the group. Even though they struggle to earn enough money to buy food for everyone, they have plenty of fun just catching the criminals.

And each character has their own demons in the past. Jet quit the police force after he lost his arm to a killer who is still on the run. Faye almost died fifty years ago in an interplanetary space accident, and awoke from a cryogenic frozen slumber with no memory. Most of all, Spike was a former member of the Red Dragon syndicate, a crime gang which terrorizes high-ranking government officials. He had quit his job as an assassin, but his grudge with his former partner, Viscious, still continues to haunt him.

This series is an excellent mixture of drama, action, comedy and romance. Most of all, this series is about freedom from a past of violence and destruction. And all of this is finally in one compact DVD box. Any anime fan who hasn't seen this anime yet should get this box now. The person definitely won't regret it.

Review - Welcome to Kanon, world of amnesiacs

Based on what I've seen from volume one, "Kanon" is probably best compared to the sleeper hit anime "Haibane Renmei." Like that series, nearly all the characters are amnesiacs who only recover their memory in their dreams. Thankfully, almost all the girls in the anime remember the male lead, Yuichi Aizawa. They are all somewhat related to Aizawa. And they all seem to like Aizawa.

Aizawa moves to the mysterious snowy town, meeting his cousin, Nayuki Minase, at the train station. He hasn't been in town for seven years, and his own memory is sketchy. Nayuki is very close to Aizawa--she shows him around the town and introduces him to her friends. While Aizawa is waiting for Nayuki at the supermarket, Tsukimiya Ayu suddenly bumps into him. She grabs his hand and runs with him to a restaurant to hide.

She was hiding from a street vendor selling taiyaki, a small fish cake. She took the cake, but a cat nearby ate a cake from the vendor. Ayu was scared and she ran away from the vendor to bump into Aizawa. Fortunately, Aizawa took Ayu back and apologized. However, Aizawa remembered a pinky promise he made with Ayu when he was young.

While this entire anime is an adaptation of a dating video game for the PC, Playstation 2 and the Dreamcast, this isn't a typical romance anime. The entire town is a mystery. Almost all the characters are amnesiacs--they cannot remember their past. The most shocking image appears in episode 4, when Aizawa sees one of the girls, Mai Kawasumi, standing in a classroom holding a sword. Only in the preview for episode 5 do we discover that Kawasumi is a demon hunter.

For mystery fans, "Kanon" is a very intriguing series. Although this was released early in 2008, it could turn out to be one of the most interesting anime of the year. The white snow also contributes to the subtle mystery of the town, in the same way that "Fargo" featured plenty of white snow. While "Kanon" is not as good as "Haibane Renmei", which also featured an nearly all-female cast, "Kanon" is still fascinating nonetheless.

Review - Freedom not for free

Freedom is one high-class anime, but it certainly is not a bargain. Bandai really shouldn't have chosen to release one episode on one DVD. After all, no one would even want to pay $27 for one episode. Despite this awful choice in marketing, this is a great anime.

The story is set in a lunar colony called Eden, where the remaining humans live after the disastrous pollution of Earth. Takeda is a bored worker on the colony who races his rival, Kazuma, in hovercraft races to pass the time. Despite help from his friends and his engineer, Alan, Takeda loses the race.

Then one day a picture of a girl falls onto the moon's surface. Takeda picks up the photo, which has the message, "Don't worry. We'll meet again soon." The photo looks as if it were taken from Earth. Yet, no matter how hard he tries, the colony administers refuse to let him onto the moon's surface to look at the Earth.

With Alan's lunar rover, Takeda and his friends set out to the side of the moon so that they could see the Earth. They discovered many photos and shells that had fallen from Earth in a lunar crater. And Earth was still blue--the surface was not polluted at all. But the colony officials were not happy--they sent robots to destroy Takeda.

While this series actually is a project to promote Nissin's Cup-of -Noodles, this series looks fantastic. The characters, after all, are designed by Katsuhiro Otomo, the director of "Akira." The series is entirely computer-generated, but the characters still carry the distinct outlines to make them look hand-drawn, unlike the CG-graphic movie "Appleseed." And although there are numerous shots focusing on the Cup-of-Noodles, the series still stands out as a great piece of work.

However, I have no idea whether these DVDs will actually make Bandai a profit in America. At a price of $27 per episode, this series is not a bargain. There are six DVDs in the series, but I would suggest waiting for a collection box of all the DVDs.