DVD Re-release - The worst romance story with a naked girl

"This Ugly Yet Beautiful World" is one of the most horrible shoujo anime shows ever made, with mediocre dialogue and romantic situations that are bound to make you puke.

It actually starts pretty strong as a romantic comedy, even though there is a lot of fan service. Although this show is not the most perverted romantic comedy I've ever seen, it presents plenty of uncomfortable shots of completely naked girls. In the first half of the anime, you're bound to see at least a girl's breasts at least once in each episode.

At first, the story of the show holds up pretty well, for all that it's worth. The anime's story centers around a lazy high school boy named Takeru Takemoto, who works as a delivery boy for his uncle. One day, he and his friend, Ryou Niyomiya, find a mysterious naked girl in a tree. This girl, named Hikari, looks almost like the dream girl which Ryou drew for Takeru.

When a giant centipede monster attacks Takeru and Hikari with its tentacles, Takeru suddenly transforms into a powerful shonen fighter with big muscles and long hair. After beating up the monster, he swears that he will protect Hikari, no matter what.

This show would have worked well as a shonen battle anime, but that isn't what the remainder of the series is about. For some reason, all of Takeru's friends and family members gather around the alien girl to provide clothes and a room for her. You don't even know how his friends heard about the girl so quickly, or why his friends decided to come together to see the girl. The show eventually turns into a disturbing harem comedy, where even Takeru's sister fights to win back her brother's love.

Around episode three, the show introduces another alien girl, named Akari. She strikes up a close friendship with Takeru's friend, Ryou Ninomiya. Akari's character is much more relatable, because she isn't so obsessed with smothering her new boyfriend with love. However, the series wants us to focus on Hikari, the least interesting of the two characters.

And for some reason, all the characters seem interested in Hikari, who wastes time in every episode by talking about the air, the water and the crickets of the Earth. No joke. In every episode, Takeru's friends and family are always around to gaze at Hikari. They all comment on Hikari's awkward fascination with the world. I mean, you'd think that after episode eight, these kids would have better things to do than to pay attention to the happy-go-lucky alien girl.

Fortunately, there is a serious story, in which ancient insect-like monsters actually attempt to destroy the world. These humongous, violent monsters awaken when they sense elevated levels of ED in teenagers such as Takeru. However, when you consider that ED actually stands for "Extended Definition," you'll find that there really isn't a good reason for anything in this anime. Sure, there are hints in episode nine about the upcoming apocalypse, but nothing is ever explained thoroughly.

Believe it or not, the series actually turns into an apocalyptic thriller at the end of episode 10. The ending also makes for a touching climax to this show. But by then, most people will get tired of all the redundant sitcom jokes. It's hard to forgive a repititious series that can't even manage to teach people to appreciate the boredom of everyday life. Even the conclusion of this series is an underwhelming disappointment.

Unless someone forces you to watch this anime at gunpoint, absolutely stay away from this series. It is possibly one of the worst anime shows ever made. And it is guaranteed to bore you to death, unless you manage to stick with it after the first five hours.

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Re-release madness - Rumbling Hearts

I noticed that I still didn't finish "Rumbling Hearts," so I figured I'd watch all the episodes.

"Rumbling Hearts" is a lousy, sexist romance anime, with women who are so dependent on their men and sex that it's just disgusting.

The plot revolves around Takayuki Narumi, some bumbling teenage guy who is a friend of Mitsuki Hayase, the top swimmer at the high school. One of Mitsuki's girl friends, Haruka Suzumiya, has a crush on Narumi, so Mitsuki hooks the two together. They become close friends, and they even have sex together. However, the love story ends tragically with a fatal car crash putting Haruka in a coma.

The second half of the story takes place three years later. Within this time period, Narumi has a romance with Mitsuki, who is now part of an insurance company. However, everything seems to change when Haruka finally wakes up from her coma.

Overall, the storyline is passable. However, "Rumbling Hearts" suffers from overplaying the drama. Mitsuki is a jerk, who really doesn't care much for her former friend who almost died in a car accident. In fact, Mitsuki spends half of the series worrying that Narumi will not love her anymore. She's so obsessed that she tries her best to keep Narumi's attention off of Haruka.

This story boils down to the voice actors and the story, which is extremely overrated on the Anime News Network and animenfo.com Web sites. Eventually, this anime revolves completely around Narumi's love relationships will all three girls in the story: even Haruka's sister. With so many girlfriends around, people will wonder why on Earth Narumi would want to focus on the selfish Mitsuki, who obsesses all the time about whether Narumi loves her.

Narumi claims that he doesn't want anyone to get hurt, but what he's really saying is that he wants to make sure Mitsuki doesn't kill herself looking for someone else to love her. The screenwriter is so self-centered in restraining Mitsuki to an overdependent relationship with Narumi. Honestly, women in Japan will never want to be this constrained to the servitude of other men.

In fact, the only likable character in this series is Haruka. Yet, even she keeps longing for a sexual relationship with Narumi after she awakens from her coma. Haruka is supposed to be the strong, independent girl who learns to fight to recover, but even she is restricted to relying on Narumi for all her support. Narumi is not trustable either: he always seems to be lying about his own relationship status constantly.

There's very little to appreciate about "Rumbling Hearts," which is based on an equally disgusting dating game. In fact, there should be no reason for it to gain so much popularity in America. However, the male audience of anime fans undoubtedly love this infantile orgy of adolescent sex and romantic overdependence. Honestly, they should know better than to watch this series, which is filled with a bunch of jerks fighting for selfish romance.

Image courtesy of funimation.com

DVD Review - Moonlight Mile: First astronaut anime sex-fest

I don't mind watching space films most of the time. Although most of them feature only men, the characters perform acts of courage and goodwill that few people could do themselves.

But this anime really shows off the masochism of space movies in its worst form. The series is so degrading for women that it's downright ridiculous.

First of all, this anime covers two daredevil mountain climbers, Saruwatari Garou and Lostman, who work hard to become astronauts in space. It sounds like a great dream. What isn't so inspiring is their ritual of having sex with women as a token of "good luck" before every mountain climb. It's true--just watch the "preparatory" sex scene in episode one before they climb a mountain.

Although I'd have to say that those guys are sure lucky to do such things while I'm still a virgin, it gets downright disturbing when these guys make an effort to have sex at the most illogical times. For example, while a secretary is taking a tour of a construction site, Garou is having sex with a waitress against the window of his heavy-duty crane. And before Lostman flies on a deadly mission in the Middle East, he has to get laid for good luck before his mission.

Good grief, these guys sure get a lot of sex. Also, how do they manage to convince their ladies to get it on? They must be really, really convincing, or disturbingly seductive.

There's also something just wrong about making almost all the men astronauts and all the women as cashiers or secretary. Although I figured that two thousand years in the future women would have the civil rights to become astronauts, apparently most of the astronauts (and most of the characters) are men, as portrayed in "Moonlight Mile".

Still, I had to admit that the animators thought of some ingenius Apollo 13-style situations. The third episode is especially engaging. Steve O'Brien, an African American who is transporting a crane in space, mysteriously loses the thrust in the rockets for his ship. To make matters worse, a meteorite hits his ship, causing him to spin slowly downward into the Earth's atmosphere. Garou saves him with a clever spaceship propelling trick--first O'brien boards the ball-shaped command module. Then the command module is released so that the spinning long end of the ship hits the command module like a bat, propelling it away from the atmosphere. My dad would probably say that this isn't physically possible, but still, I have to admit that the scene looked impressive from a visual standpoint.

Yet, I still can't help but think that this anime is pushing the limits of masochism a little too far. Although "Moonlight Mile" is visually impressive and suspenseful, it is also an unbelievable story. I was looking forward to a brave story about astronauts performing courageous feats. I wasn't expecting a sex-fest, which really became downright ridiculous. When compared to the awesome space anime series "Planetes", "Moonlight Mile" falls flat.

Image from doanimation.wordpress.com

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