CX anime reviews

[CX]

Pale Cocoon
(single episode OVA)

At only 23 minutes long, this is a very short OVA, and while it looks good and has a decent story, I can understand why none of the US distributers have picked this OVA up and made a dub for it yet. I was actually introduced to this OVA by another reviewer in his first "Top 10 Unlicensed Anime" list, which he splits into two parts, here and here.

I have to say, though, that while I found it very visually appealing, and I found the concept somewhat interesting, it confused me somewhat and I don't really understand it. This being the case, I'm going to spoil the hell out of this OVA, so you've been warned.

The setting is basically underground in what was supposed to be an underground climate control infrastructure which once covered the planet. Apparently Earth has been ruined environmentally, and the implication is that things are getting worse as people are being forced to move further and further underground. This seems to be the typical environmental aesop, because everything we see points to humanity ruining the planet.

The story itself focuses mainly on two people, a young man named Ura and a young woman named Riko. The two of them work at the "Archive Excavation Department", and are among the last of what used to be a massive work effort. Basically, despite all the advanced technology humanity still possesses, somehow most of human history has been lost, and the job of this department is to dig up as much information out of the archives as they can and restore it. As one might expect, this turns out to be depressing to the vast majority of the people who had worked there as they learn about how Earth used to be and how humanity apparently ruined it through overpopulation and pollution. Ura is actually the only one left who's interested in learning for learning's sake, and everyone else has either already quit, or say that they're going to quit during the OVA. Riko is essentially the voice of the rest of humanity, voicing a very nihilistic view about their work and about the fate of humanity. She's basically stopped caring, and Ura tries to get her interested again by showing her a video file he is in the process of restoring, but she just stops coming into work, choosing instead to lay on a platform next to a glowing core of some kind, staring up at the blackness above. Ura sees something in this video file that changes his perspective along with ours, revealing the thing that confuses me about this OVA. While the video he was restoring is just a music video, apparently a shot of a spiral staircase upside down leading into the sky causes him to climb the staircase around the power core I mentioned up to an old elevator, which seems to take him even higher at a rapid speed, right before it seems to fall... right out into the sky.

As it turns out, they've been on the moon all along, humanity apparently having been evacuated there following an environmental disaster on Earth. Apparently everyone has been on a ship which is still sticking out of the lunar surface upside down, though with a cubic dome covering it. Why, I don't know. All I know is that gravity is apparently being generated artificially and Ura managed to work himself out into the weak lunar gravity after actually falling out of the ground. And that kind of confuses me somewhat because that is the best sense I can make out of it. Apparently this is supposed to double as a somewhat optimistic ending despite Ura's fate not looking all that great, because Earth looks like it might have restored itself, appearing to be blue and normal in contrast to one of the first lunar colonists' description of Earth as looking rusted.

Now, it's kind of obvious that out focus is supposed to be more on how the characters feel and all that, but I guess I'm too left-brained to see all that far beneath the surface. I say that because what was shown doesn't make all that much sense to me. Riko explained the very understandable depression that would come with seeing Earth all pretty and looking fine when they're all living in post-apocalyptic devastation. One of Ura and Riko's unseen co-workers even expresses some skepticism as to whether any of the stuff in the images and videos they've restored is even real. The thing is, it doesn't make sense to me that a humanity this advanced technologically has forgotten so much of its past that it's apparently forgotten that they aren't even on Earth anymore. At the very basic, wouldn't the original colonists/refuges have passed that little nugget of information onto their children and so on and so forth down the generations? So in a way, it would have made more sense for it to be aliens going through an extinct humanity's archives, but that has been done so many times that it's cliché, so I can understand this OVA wanting to do something a bit different. It also bothers me that no one seems to care what caused the apocalypse. I know some people argue that it doesn't matter, but this is something that tends to bother me even if nothing can be done about it. Another example would be The Road, which has much the same tone as this OVA anyway. I guess if nothing else, I would have thought it would be a goal of this "Archive Excavation Department" to find out what went wrong to put them all in their current predicament, but no one seems to care, not even Ura. But, I think this is supposed to be like one of those "art" films, and art doesn't always have to make sense.

I guess you could say that I was somewhat disappointed, because I was hoping that there would be more to it, somehow. It actually seems more like the pilot episode of a series than a one-off OVA. I would still say, though, that this OVA is worth a watch, despite not making all that much sense, at least not to me. It's barely over 20 minutes long, so it's not like you're out all that much even if you end up a bit frustrated like I did. 6/10.

[CX]

Paprika
(2006 movie)

This was definitely an oddball of a movie. But then since it involved technology intruding into dreams, I guess "weird" is to be expected.

Taking place in the near future, a scientific team has developed a device capable of monitoring and recording a patient's dream. But it doesn't stop there, as apparently at least one psychologist can take on a dream persona and actually help people through their dreams. Again, all well and good until the devices get stolen. From that point on it becomes more of a "science gone mad" movie that I can't help but nit-pick the hell out of, mostly because of the improbability of what the movie ends up suggesting that technology, however new and amazing, can do.

At first it seemed more legitimate, in that some of the head doctors working on the project were losing control of their conscious mind over to a dream, because at this point it was suggested that it happened as a result of having been hooked up to the machine. It still seems plausible there, but where it gets implausible and I lose my willing sense of disbelief is when the movie suggests this device, called the DC Mini, can somehow remotely enter peoples' minds and mess them up. But wait, it gets worse, because later on in the movie, dreams have somehow manifested in the real world. At first I thought this was simply a dream within a dream, but no, the movie tells us that dreams have in fact invaded reality.

The whole dream within a dream thing has been done a lot of times before, usually to either wax poetic about the nature of reality, or to philosophize about the nature of dreams vs. the nature of reality. I'm sure this movie was still trying to do that, but I just didn't quite go along for the wild ride this time. While it would still mess with a person's mind if they kept waking up only to find that they were still dreaming, having dreams somehow magically manifest in reality kind of ruins it. Plus, as you can tell, I've really gotten hung up on this, because what started out as science fiction became fantasy. The story about how a new technology could effect humanity, in this case through the abuse of a megalomaniac (who looks a lot like Patrick Stewart's Professor X), just got lost in a jumble of everyone's dream getting mixed together and marching through Tokyo despite there being no way a device made to have the human subconscious interact with a computer should be able to accomplish this.

Well, it wasn't a horrible movie or anything, it just wasn't very good. My hang-up aside, there wasn't a whole lot that actually happened. I mean, a fat guy got a hot chick (who happened to be his boss) and a cop got over a recurring nightmare, but that's about it. Mostly this movie was just eye candy, showing us something weird and throwing in some fan service here and there for good measure. There was no real depth, though, at least not that I could see.

Pretty much the same thing goes for the characters. Pretty much all of them were bland, and we never really got to learn much about them, other than the shocker that the hot psychologist who is repulsed by the morbidly obese guy is actually in love with him. Well, I guess that was supposed to be shocking, but really it just didn't make a lot of sense because of the part where she was openly disgusted by his appearance and his habits, as most people probably would be, brilliant scientist or not.

Actually the most interesting character in this movie was the detective whose dream we start out in, Detective Konakawa Toshimi. He's also about the only one who goes through any kind of growth, finally getting over his recurring nightmare and his completely unreasonable fear/hatred of movies. And then there's the irony of how he ended up playing out the character he played in a student film, in which he played the part of a detective. Well, the movie explains it a bit better than I do, but there's a connection to his dream and what's going on in his life during the movie.

Anyway, I actually ended up being a bit disappointed with this movie. I was hoping for something that was a bit more straight-up sci-fi and got a flashy fantasy movie instead. As I already said, that's not to say that it's bad, it's just not very good either. I guess if you have a spare hour and a half this might be a good time-waster. 6/10.

[CX]

Planetes
(26 episode series)

This is a hard sci-fi which presents us with a fairly plausible future in which the world is a lot more interested in developing space in order to exploit a new energy resource located in the Moon and in Jupiter. This is slightly hampered by all the space trash that's been generated over decades of space development from the initial space race to the slightly futuristic setting of the series. The series actually opens with a consequence of this space trash, showing us just how dangerous something as small as a screw can be when it's moving at orbital speeds when it runs into a sub-orbital passenger liner. This sets the series up to follow the main characters, who all belong to the "Debris Section" of a company named Technora, whose job it is to go out and haul in space debris in order to make space a safer place to travel. Naturally, like everyone whose job it is to clean up after others, they get maligned quite a bit, even when they manage to save human lives.

The series follows two main protagonists, Ai Tanabe, a young woman who is a great example of how easy it apparently is to get a job in space in the future, and Hachirota "Hachimaki" Hoshino, a cynical, more experienced member of Debris Section who was the most junior member until Tanabe showed up. I both like and dislike both characters to be entirely honest. Tanabe is likable in the sense that she always has an optimistic outlook on everything with a kind of fresh innocence that any fan Star Trek can probably relate to. At the same time, she tends to be overly optimistic, thinking that love can literally solve every problem, and she tends to proselytize about it quite a bit. The writing also pretty much bears her out as being right, which reminds me of one of the aspects of Star Trek I actually hate, Hachimaki is somewhat more pragmatic, at least at first, having seen plenty in just the three years he's been on the job to know better. At the same time, he also dreams of owning his own ship, though later on he accepts the fact that his job as a debris hauler makes that an impossibility. On the other hand, his negativity about pretty much everything gets just as grating as Tanabe's constantly going on about how love will solve everything.

The secondary characters are somewhat interesting, though I think the two section managers were much too silly, even if they were supposed to be the comedy relief in a series that actually manages to get somewhat dark at a few points. My favorite characters are actually Fee Carmichael, the captain of Toy Box, the small ship Debris Section uses to collect space trash, and Yuri Mihairokov, a mature, seasoned member of Debris Section with a compelling background story. The show went over the top with Fee's smoking addiction and how she'll become not only cranky but actually somewhat insane if she has to go any length of time without being able to smoke, though I do appreciate the fact that the show acknowledged the fact that smoking in space isn't exactly to be taken lightly. Otherwise I found her to be likeable and a good leader who cared about her people and getting the job done. Yuri is more interesting than either of the protagonists in my opinion because he has a somewhat more substantial reason for wanting to become a debris hauler that actually involves the opening scene of the series. He also goes through a far more believable development as a character when he finally lets go of an old pain and the entire reason he became a debris hauler and decides to keep working his job as best he can.

I also found the story to be pretty interesting. Not only is it something of a character drama, but it also has a bigger story going on in the background at the beginning of the series which evolves naturally into something that directly involves the main characters. Basically we have INTO, a somewhat more militant evolution of NATO and the UN pushing into space to exploit resources to its own ends. They also seem to have a somewhat more annoyingly unrealistic side in that they not only like to invade other countries for basically no reason, but they apparently have a thing for planting mines that will mess up space ships' electronics in places that could harm ships from their own member states. This makes them something of a bad guy, though they aren't made out to be entirely evil either. There are also terrorists, who call themselves the Space Defense Front, who are given a fairly realistic back-story and motivations for doing what they do, despite being much more obviously bad guys. The thing is that despite how awesome all this space development is and the clean energy source and the advanced technology it provides, it's also acting to further widen the gap between the advanced industrial countries able to exploit these resources and the poor countries that can't even feed its own people. A couple of countries are made up to illustrate this by introducing us to a few characters who are from these countries. This helps to flesh the story out very nicely.

Most of the series follows Debris Section as they not only pick up space trash, but deal with illegal space dumpers, company politics, international politics, and terrorists. We also get to meet some interesting characters along the way, like Gigalt Gangaragash, a veteran astronaut and teacher to Hachimaki, as well as a former Debris Section member who is responsible for many of the nicknames various characters have, and Nono, a twelve year old girl who was born on the Moon. We also meet some of Hachimaki's friends, some of Tanabe's friends, and a few obnoxious comedy relief characters who somewhat tragically go on to die later on in the story.

The story ends up focusing on the construction of a ship called the Wernher von Braun. The terrorists do everything they can to blow it up, the guy designing and building it is being a complete bastard, and dirty politics are going on in the background. Also, out of no where, Hachimaki decides he wants to join the crew and goes really balls to the wall to do so, leading to an aspect of the series I didn't like because I really didn't think it flowed very naturally, but I'll get into that later on. The build up and climax of the terrorist attack on the Von Braun made the show very interesting to follow, and I was drawn in to the point that I had to watch the last half or so of the series marathon style until I got to the end. It also shows us the after effects of the attack on Hachimaki and Tanabe, who both nearly took very dark turns in order to survive, and then deal with the consequences afterwards. For instance, Tanabe was running out of air, and very nearly took the air supply from the character she was trying to save, while simultaneously coming to the realization that this character probably deserved to die anyway. Instead, she decides she won’t cross that line, and is only saved because someone just happens to come along, and the terrorist and betrayer she saved has a change of heart and attracts the attention of their rescuers. As a consequence, Tanabe suffers severe nerve damage that would have been permanent without the advanced technology of the series, and even with it took more than a year to recover to the point she could walk on her own and to venture back into space, even if it was just for a visit. This is especially interesting in that it does this with characters who are not a member of a military, but are instead just civilian space janitors, which is along the same lines of what Star Trek could have been if Starfleet had not actually been a military, which is something the creative talent behind that franchise often stated they wanted to be the case, only to turn around and have Starfleet act like a military. Toy Box is not armed and neither is its crew. Neither is the crew of the Von Braun, which depends entirely on an INTO security force for defense against being boarded by terrorists, and ends up improvising tools as weapons in order to defend themselves and save the ship.

This actually brings me to the aspects of the series I didn't like. It starts off with Hachimaki having a close call which very realistically leaves him somewhat psychologically scarred. In his recovery from this, he just up and decides to leave everything and everyone behind, including recent romantic interest Tanabe, so he can focus on joining the crew of the Von Braun. The way he does this, alienating all his friends, coworkers and family in the process just comes off as completely out of character and it literally comes out of the blue. To its credit, the series does try to explain his motivation, but I never really bought it. I also never really bought into the romance between Hachimaki and Tanabe. I know they were trying to go for that whole "opposites attract" thing, but it all came off as forced to me, and I'd really rather they'd never been more than friends rather than following convention by having the two of them hook up. Basically it's so the show can milk a bit more drama out of Hachimaki 's heel-face-turn when he just suddenly decides to leave everyone and everything behind. It was also no surprise at all when the two of them end up getting back together and actually get married. Incidentally, it's implied he got her pregnant in addition to marrying her just prior to leaving on a seven year trip to and from Jupiter, which doesn't seem very much like a happy ending to me.

Then there's Claire Rondo, who was Hachimaki's ex-girlfriend and who just happened to be from one of those small impoverished made up countries mentioned earlier. She's a member of Control Section who actually seems to come around and pull her head out of her ass when it comes to Debris Section. She's fleshed out more by the revelation that she's pushing herself so hard in order to escape her humble background, much like the temp worker Edelgard Rivera, who works for Debris Section while projecting a stern, professional exterior while trying to hide her unpleasant past. The difference is, while Edelgard grows to become more of a member of Debris Section, Claire ends up betraying them. She plans out how to hijack Toy Box after being demoted to Debris Section and apparently having joined the Space Defense Front, and then does just that along with her boyfriend and former security officer Hakim Ashmead. With both of these characters, their betrayal is actually handled fairly well, with some hints being given out before hand but still being very surprising without coming off as out of character. Where it goes wrong is in the aftermath. Claire betrayed the people who had come to trust her with every intention of them ending up dead along with everyone on the Von Braun and everyone in the Lunar city they'd set the Von Braun to crash into. She also helped her terrorist comrades gun down crew members aboard the Von Braun, making her every bit a bad guy as far as I'm concerned. Yet the show tries to make the audience feel sympathetic toward her, and even goes as far as to say that Fee and Yuri, the people aboard Toy Box she beat up and left to die, wouldn't have testified against her and that she's only in prison serving only a 10 year sentence because she decided on her own to confess. While I like the fact that she was a villain with a sympathetic background and had more than one dimension, once she'd crossed the line, there was no going back for her as far as I'm concerned.

Everything else I didn't like about the series comes down to nitpicks about Technora Corporation and just the way the characters were presented and the like. The thing about it is that while it wanted to present us with an international team of people, no on in it came off as anything other than Japanese, and I don't just mean how Tanabe calls Hachimaki "Sempi" or how he in turn calls Gigalt "Sensai", I mean how everyone acts. Everyone in Technora, despite supposedly coming from all over the world, acts exactly like people in a cut-throat Japanese company, treating everyone like they are in a caste-based culture, with everyone beneath them being treated as if they are sub-human. While it does make Debris Section the underdogs, it just doesn't live up to its supposed international nature, which admittedly is something most sci-fis are just as guilty of. Adding to this is the dub, which isn't bad exactly, it's just that no one even bothered to try to sound anything other than American. I know some people complain about bad accents, and to be honest when they are poorly done they tend to stand out, but I do appreciate it when the people making these shows at least go through the effort to try, even if it doesn't turn out well. Moonlight Mile even does that, and it isn't nearly as interesting a show in my opinion.

Everything else about the show is pretty well done. The CGI used didn't stand out that much from the animated elements, and the animation itself was very well done, looking very smooth and capturing the motion of objects in space very well. That in itself makes this series stand out, because they actually portrayed how objects would move in space very well, and made a point of not having any sound in space, much like 2001: A Space Odyssey. In addition to that, they also had the only artificial gravity in space being generated through spinning portions of the various stations and ships seen in the series, with everything being zero-gravity, or in the Moon's case being very low gravity. At times they seemed to forget this by having people just walking around normally while on the Moon, but when they ran it was with the more familiar bounding motion that the low Lunar gravity pretty much necessitates. Overall the space aspect was very well done, and it only adds to the quality of the series as far as I'm concerned.

I think I'd consider this series one of my favorites, but I wouldn't list it very high because of all the negative aspects I mentioned. That being said, I would still very much recommend this series to anyone who likes character dramas and science fiction, as this is both, and actually manages to stick a lot closer to what science fiction is supposed to be about, which is how advanced technology effects humanity. 8/10.

[CX]

The Silent Service
(Single episode OVA)

In some ways I could almost see this as a movie in the same vein as The Hunt for Red October, and to its credit, it shows submarine warfare fairly realistically. I just can't get over the huge axe this OVA had to grind. It's hugely obvious that whoever wrote this is not a fan of the United States and hates the fact that Japan is bound by treaty to limit itself militarily.

Now I could go on a brief rant about how it's basically Japan's own fault for starting WWII in the Pacific, but that would be a waste of time. One might argue that with all the time that's past (though this takes place in the late 1980s), that everyone should probably be over that and the treaty could probably go by the wayside, but this OVA fails completely to make that kind of an argument. Instead it argues that the United States is completely made up of bastards who will violate the treaty with Japan at the drop of a hat and declare war on Japan over one submarine. While it's certainly true that the US Government has a history of going back on its treaties (*cough*Black Hills*cough*), I doubt the treaty it has with Japan would be dropped so quickly, especially since the US has an interest in maintaining its bases there so it can deploy its military to anywhere in the world on short notice, and at the time this OVA was made, that was especially important given tensions with the Soviet Union. And that's about as far as I'm going to get into that.

As far as the actual story goes, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The thing starts out with an entire submarine crew faking its own death. Why? Well because there's a secret new submarine they have to crew, that's why. How nice that the entire crew went along with it. Of course it's pretty short-sighted since the crew will eventually have to resurface, since the whole point of this was that the US and Japan had jointly developed a nuclear attack submarine (basically an improved Los Angeles class) with the idea that it would become part of Japan's navy. So unless they're planning on killing this entire crew, wouldn't it have just been easier to look like they were off on some secret mission on their original submarine instead of sinking it and faking the crew's deaths? And I hate to say it, but the US would never develop a top-of-the-line submarine and then just hand it over to another country's crew, no matter how tight we are with said country. But that's pretty much the only way this story can work, because without an uber-sub that can give its captain such a huge advantage over the sub-hunting capabilities of the US Navy to the point he can even show off while he's doing it, they would just get blown away and the story would have to be a lot different, if not just end.

Apparently whoever wrote this was a bit worried about losing the audience, though, since they didn't make this an act of the Japanese government. Instead, the captain pulls a Marco Ramius and defects, only instead of to another country he declares the submarine an independent nation and says he has a nuclear weapon on board. Again, how nice that the entire crew is with him on this. Literally the only person on board to give him even intellectual opposition is the American observer/advisor who was on board with them when they decided to show the fact that they'd gone rogue by firing on some other American submarines. The OVA also makes a show of having the Japanese government agonize over the idea of actually supporting this mutinous captain or not, despite the fact that the guy is as much a traitor to Japan as he is a backstabber to the US. There is a lot of convoluted reasoning put forward to support this, and really this is helped along by having the US act completely unreasonable. They even have the president declare war on Japan, even though he can't actually do that, and the only warfare that's happening is between the US Pacific Fleet and the rogue submarine. Oh, that and the JMDF ships that are stupid enough to try defending said rogue submarine.

And that's where the story just sort of ends. There's a subplot involving another Japanese captain who's always been a rival of the rogue captain, but that never ends up really going anywhere either. This is probably because the manga this OVA was based on wasn't finished yet, and I'm going to guess that given the story content, no one felt like finishing this OVA series. Can't say I blame them all that much. 1/10.

[CX]

Slayers
(26 episode series)

While not a horrible anime series, it definitely isn't good. This is more one of those boring shows that tries to be funny and occasionally manages to be, kind of like Ah! My Goddess, only without a group like the Motor Club to make things slightly interesting. I can honestly say that after a few episodes I would have given up on this series. But as it turns out, I'm the sound guy for the local anime club, and this was one of the series they elected to watch this semester.

Now to be fair, this series does have its moments where it actually succeeds at being funny, whether intentionally or not. It's obvious that this series doesn't take itself entirely seriously, and it frequently goes over the top with things and breaks the fourth wall. The thing is, a lot of the things that are supposed to be funny, like say main character Lina Inverse's eating habits, generally aren't. There are also a few other moments that lend themselves very well to being riffed and just generally being easy to make fun of. Bad voice acting was one of those things, and interjecting "so when do I get paid?" after an example of it was a fairly easy way to get a few laughs. Then there was a fight toward the end of the series that happened to fit very well with this YTMND, which my friends and I quoted over and over during said fight scene. You'll probably have had to have seen this series to know what I'm talking about, so if you haven't, don't worry if you don't get this joke because frankly it isn't worth it to watch just to find out.

Unfortunately, for the most part this series was just plain boring. Usually this was when the series actually got into its plot, which was a very typical quest plot for what was a very typical medieval magic fantasy story. This is actually one of the things I think of when I think "generic anime," mostly because it seems like there are a lot of them, which I hope to never ever watch. There's some magical big bad who wants to take over the world and some random hero(ine) with some kind of special skill slowly gathers up allies and goes on side-quests to gain those allies as well as experience. And since this one tries to be funny most of the time, hijinks ensue. Oh, and they end up fighting the big bad twice.

I have to say that I was relieved when this show was finally over. It seemed like it wasn't going to end for a while, like it would just keep on going around in circles, doing the same tired old crap over and over again. I have to wonder if part of the problem isn't that this series might not have been aimed at a younger audience. I mean, there were more mature jokes in there, but that could have just been parental bonuses. Either way, the humor tended to be rather childish and I tired of it rather quickly thanks to the same types of bad jokes being done constantly.

Now this isn't the most horrible anime I've seen, but it is one of the most boring ones. Chobits still has it beat there, as well as in the "jokes that aren't funny" category, but not by a whole lot. 1/10.

[CX]

Submarine 707R
(2 episode OVA)

I'm not really sure if I can make much sense out of this one. It had a lot of action, but not a whole lot of substance, I'm afraid. That actually isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in this case it isn't really a good thing, either.

The best I can figure, the bad guy, Admiral Red, is going around blowing everyone out of the water because he's convinced humanity is polluting and exploiting the oceans. The blowing people up part then doesn't make a lot of sense because, as he even admits himself, he is helping to pollute the oceans with all the junk from the ships he's blowing up. He also calls a secret underwater base home, despite thinking humans shouldn't be out in the ocean, so maybe I just missed something there... Or maybe not. Who knows? The only permanent residents there that I could tell were Red's wife and 4 daughters, who I'm convinced are only there in the hopes that we'll actually feel some kind of sympathy when the inevitable happens.

This anime definitely doesn't try to be very realistic, what with the odd-shaped submarines and the city-sized aircraft carriers that can also submerge, but really the best part is the tiny 707, which is way bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. So who is driving this thing? Captain Hayami, who's fat and also has a wife and daughter. Actually the best part is how Admiral Red is able to take out entire fleets of high-tech ships and submarines sent after him, but the rickety old 707 is able to not only take on his high-tech UX submarine, but actually sink him and all the subs he'd recruited to help him.

Okay, so it's not "realistic", what about the story and the characters? Well, it tries. It tries to make us like Captain Hayami and his family. It tries to make us like a trio of young cadets that joins the crew (including one that wears a dog collar and often a leash with it) It tries to make us feel some sympathy for Admiral Red and his family, instead of just seeing him as batshit insane. It tries to hide the fact that its story is practically non-existant. It tries.

Okay, but is it fun? Well, sort of. I have to admit that I liked some of the ship designs, even if they weren't particularly hydrodynamic. I also have to admit that it managed to be a little fun, but at the same time it also tended to get tedious. Even if this had just been a space show it felt like it wanted to be, I doubt it would have been all that much fun or interesting.

Overall, while this was a little interesting to watch early on, mainly because of the action, by the time the second episode started it actually had gotten a little stale. Introducing us to the families of the protagonist and the antagonist didn't really do anything story-wise either, so it probably would've been better if they'd been left out or just barely mentioned. It tried, but I just couldn't get into it. 3/10.

[CX]

Summer Wars
(2009 movie)

I can honestly say that this movie didn't look that terribly interesting to me when I read about it, but it looked interesting enough to watch. So when someone requested that I review this movie, I guess I figured I could for the hell of it. Unfortunately I'm guessing this person will be disappointed, because they probably wanted to see what I thought because they themselves liked it. Or maybe they just wanted a second opinion on it before watching it, who knows? In any case, I didn't really like this movie, because the whole romantic comedy thing just isn't my thing. I'm the type of anime nerd who reminisces about the time anime was about giant robots fighting and explosions despite being fairly recent to the whole anime thing, but this movie is more along the lines of being socially awkward.

The movie follows protagonist Kenji Koiso, a high school math nerd who works as a system admin for this movie's version of Second Life, or something kind of like that, except that it's called Oz. This massive online game/marketplace/everything you can possibly connect to the internet thing is made out to be the most awesomest thing ever, but really it touches on a nerve that's kind of ironic for an internet nerd like myself to have, which is half of the story and half of the reason why it really isn't my thing. The other half of the story comes in the form of Natsuki Shinohara, who busts into the room Kenji and his friend/fellow moderator are working in. She says she's looking for someone to do a job for her, and that there's money in it for them. This being their place of work and all, Kenji and his buddy both tell her that they already have jobs. Of course it helps that she's an attractive girl, and when she mentions that the only thing they have to do is to go out to the country with her, they both volunteer. She only needs one of them, though, and a little game of rock-paper-scissors apparently sorts out which one of them gets the job, and touches on yet another thing that I don't like about shows like this.

I'm sure you're wondering what that could be, so this is the part where I mention that the job is pretending to be Natsuki's fiancé. It seems that her granny is turning 90 and like most old people she's having some health problems. Like a lot of old, traditional people, she apparently wants to see that Natsuki is married off like a good little Japanese girl before she kicks the bucket, so the job is to lie to this nice old woman's face. There are so many things that I don't like about that. I'm sure you can tell that there's a values dissonance there as far as the whole being a good little girl and getting married, so there's that. Then there's the fact that Natsuki is being dishonest and manipulative in order to look good to her grandmother, even if she thinks it's somehow good for the her materfamlias (and the entire family) to think that they're adding another member to their family before granny buys it. She neglected to tell Kenji any of this on that whole long trip out to the place which made it super awkward for him, and in addition to that he was pressured to lie to a woman and a whole family he was trying to be a respectable house guest to literally within a few minutes of getting there and being introduced. I know this was meant for comedy and I'm sure a lot of people even found this funny, but I was actually a little appalled. How much was she going to pay him, anyway?

Now up to this point, everything seemed more like one of those domestic bliss fantasies many members of the fairer sex seem to have. There's a big house and a big family, with lots of little kids running around, and everyone mostly gets along aside from a few little comedic conflicts here and there to make things interesting, I guess. Now I don't come from a very big family or have a big house in the country, but my family is big enough for me to see this for the fantasy it is. But then I'm biased because I really don't like most of my family, and to be frank the less I see of them the better. Oh, and I hate little kids, too, so the idea of a bunch of them running around being rambunctious doesn't make me laugh or smile so much as leaving me somewhere between wanting to curl into the fetal position and wanting to growl at them to get off my lawn.



The other half of the story comes into play when, later that night, Kenji gets a text message from some stranger with a code for him to figure out, and like a dumbass he actually solves it and replies back with the answer. I don’t know about any of you, but when I get a text from someone I don't know, I just assume they got the wrong number and delete it. So I was completely unsurprised that the next morning he was being accused of hacking the wonderful world of Oz, since it also apparently didn't occur to anyone that a hacker wouldn't be dumbass enough to hack using their own legitimate account. Conveniently, the big family happens to count a police officer among its numbers, so that saves them from having to make a phone call to take him away. Of course by now, things are going really wrong and they can't make it to jail anyway, so they just take him back home. All the while this is going on and things are being messed up by what appears to be a generic movie brand version of Second Life or World of Warcraft, I can't help but think how completely stupid it is to have all these things connected to the internet to the point that they can actually be controlled by it. This is that nerve I mentioned before, because as much of a technology nerd as I am, the idea of doing something like this stuns me. The sad thing is, you can already see aspects of this in that society seems to have forgotten to do a lot of things without the aid of computers, and, well, I'm getting of track here. Sufficed to say, the big emergency of the movie pretty much just made me roll my eyes because it was pretty much a problem of everyone's own making.

I will give them this, though, setting the real world portion of this sci-fi technological story in an old style, traditional Japanese home place with a 90 year old woman calling people on an old school rotary phone in order to help out was kind of funny. I totally see what they did there.

In any case, the black sheep of the family shows up and it's revealed that he had gone to America for a while. He'd also stolen a bunch of money from Granny, so naturally everyone hates the guy, except of course Natsuki, who it is revealed had a crush on him since she was in kindergarten. Oh, Japan... Well, he was adopted, so I guess that makes it not incestuous, technically. Of course the information we're given about him comes into play when it's revealed all the problems are being caused by an AI that's from an American university. Gee, I wonder if the two could be in any way related?

Of course they are. Granny gets so mad about it, that in spite of the fact that while he made the evil AI, it as actually the US military that set the thing loose in Oz to test it out, you know, because it's not like you'd do something like that in a controlled environment instead of something that is apparently connected to everything, including a satellite in orbit, that she actually tries to kill his ass with a spear. But hey, let's just recognize this for the shot at that American military that it is. Of course this immediately begged the question as to whether this guy would somehow redeem himself, like say by helping to destroy this AI. Since he wasn't the one who actually released the thing, I really never had much doubt there.

And then Granny dies, right after making Kenji promise to take care of her manipulative granddaughter. The conflict is then generated by most of the family naturally wanting to deal with the whole Granny being dead thing, while the few of them that actually know something horrible might happen struggle to solve that, giving Dell and a few other companies some product placement in the process. And so starts the online battle, which is one of the lamest things I've ever seen.

Now before anyone gets too mad at me, you have to understand that the whole social networking thing is just not my thing. So all these online games like Second Life and World of Warcraft are lame to me to begin with. What can I say? I like shoot people from the first person perspective, so give me Halo or FEAR any day. The thing is, even with something like that, when someone plays it, it's just some person looking at a screen. In this movie, it's represented more like a fully immersive virtual reality, with everyone having a cute little furry avatar (I don’t like furs either, by the way). That just comes off as that much more lame to me especially when people who are literally right next to a character in the room playing the same game actually use their little avatars to talk to each other, and at different points in the game they react as if they feel pain when their avatar is getting beat up in the game. Sorry guys, this just came off as lame to me.

Of course everything works itself out in the end, including the part where Natsuki decides she likes Kenji and he decides he likes her. The massive family even pressures them to get married and to kiss right there in front of them. You know, the sad thing is, this aspect of the movie I didn't like could have been very easily avoided had the two of them already at least kind of had a thing going for each other, and the reason Natsuki wanted Kenji to pretend to be her fiancé was because she, you know, actually wanted him to be her fiancé. Instead it was a 50/50 chance that it could have been Kenji's fellow nerd, since Kenji could have just as easily lost at that game of rock-paper-scissors instead of winning it.

But enough bitching; this just wasn't my kind of movie and my grading is going to reflect that. But don't let that put you off if this actually is your kind of movie. If you like romantic comedies, you will probably like this movie even if you don't like the computer game part of this movie, simply because the romantic comedy part is like so many other movies in that genre. Like how Twister and Sweet Home Alabama start out as just being a quick little diversion from the protagonist's regular life but turns into the whole falling in love thing. If you also happen to play Second Life and/or WoW, you'll probably really like this movie, because that's basically what it is. I, on the other hand, like neither, but I do recognize the work and talent that went into making it, so I'm not going to goose egg it even if I end up not giving it a very good score. 5/10.

[CX]

Tide-Line Blue
(13 episode series)

This was a thoroughly enjoyable series to watch, balancing action and a coherent plot that kept me interested enough to watch the next episode. Now, it has a fairly familiar storyline in that most of Earth's surface has been flooded, making most everything take place on or under the ocean, but in this case it's caused by some unknown ecological disaster rather than a madman. While it may have been caused by some kind of "science gone wrong" experiment, no one knows and as far as the plot is concerned, it doesn't matter. Here the conflict is mainly between the New United Nations and the submarine USS Ulysses, commanded by a rogue former US Navy Captain. While they both agree that what's left of the world needs to be united if humanity is to regain anything of its former level of civilization, Aoi, the secretary general of the New United Nations, thinks that this can be accomplished through diplomacy, and Gould, the disillusioned captain of Ulysses thinks the only way to bring peace to the world is through military force.

Naturally, the anime doesn't really focus much on these characters, and instead focuses on a teen-aged boy named Keel, who wants to hook up with a girl who's already knocked up named Isla. Both of them are lucky enough to live on an island that just happened to be were a massive nuclear-powered aircraft carrier washed up, so they have basically limitless power. Of course this carrier is also the meeting place of the New United Nations, and Gould has gotten to the point that he actually attacks the NUN at one of its meetings. Being the gentleman he is, he sends his adjutant to formally declare war first. As it turns out this is Teen, twin brother of Keel.

The island is devastated by the Ulysses's attack, forcing most of the inhabitants to evacuate because it looks like the carrier's reactor might melt down and spew radiation everywhere. Naturally this is when Isla goes into labor and hijinks ensue when Teen shows up to help a clueless Keel deliver the baby. He also gives Keel his badge and lets him know about the ride he'd planned to take out of there, back to his ship. Teen is then captured, and Keel with Isla and child in tow make it to the ride, which turns out to be a mini-sub from the Ulysses.

The series then divides its attention between Teen and Keel, two brothers separated when their evacuation from a space station goes wrong. The space station was supposed to have a pretty mundane mission originally, which I guess is why there's an entire family on it. When the "Eden's Hammer" disaster happens, the space station is damaged and will eventually fall out of orbit, so the father decides to stay on board to complete the new, important mission of mapping Earth's new surface, oceans, and remaining resources, while the mother and twin brothers are evacuated to the surface. Apparently things don't go well and as far as Keel knows, his mother and brother are both killed. As it turned out only the mother was killed, and Teen was rescued by Gould at about the same time he took on a young girl about the same age.

There is some interesting character development and interaction while everything goes on, but mostly it's a kind of coming of age story for Keel. No one really stays the same, though. Naturally there's a lot of focus on action, but this doesn't drag down the story, which manages to keep a fairly consistent plot going. It even manages to depict submarine and anti-submarine warfare fairly realistically for an anime. Probably the only place it goes overboard is with the comedy, which really only does so because of the inclusion of an ostrich which is only there for comedy relief, and somehow gets dragged along everywhere. Some of the characters even complain about it, yet they keep dragging it with them everywhere, so it just ends up being one big unfunny joke. Other than that this was a pretty good series. They even made the bad guy fairly sympathetic, though I think they might have been going a bit far with how everything just kind of works out in the end.

I would definitely recommend this series, and in fact I'm adding it to my list at the beginning of the thread. 9/10.

[CX]

Titan A.E.
(2000 movie)

This is one of those movies that I wanted to like but just couldn't. That's mostly because much like so many movies and other shows before it, it had so much potential that just kind of fizzled out and died. A big part of that is that this movie couldn't decide what it wanted to be, kind of like the Disney movie Atlantis. On the one hand, it wanted to be more of a serious grown up movie, and that's the part of it I liked and felt had potential to go somewhere. On the other hand, apparently somewhere along the way, someone decided this was a kid's show (probably because it's animated), so there was a lot of childish humor along the way, and to be frank it really gave off mixed signals. Just as an example, a character got shot by one of those fancy sci-fi laser guns that does pretty much whatever it needs to do in a particular scene, and in this case that was to reduce this character into a mass of green goo, which should have been a gruesome but instant death, but instead this character's mouth managed to survive long enough to say, "bulls eye." Then of course there's the scene where one character goes all mortal combat on the other and snaps his neck. For kids!

To be fair, though, not a whole lot about the movie really made all that much sense. Apparently humanity has developed this giant space ark they call the Titan, which has the capability of forming an entire planet out of nothing but giant ice crystals and cloning every other form of life that existed on Earth prior to some aliens showing up and blowing it up. This is where I, at least, feel not a lot makes sense, though this may be just due to a lack of a scene or something just to set things up. Because why would Earth ever develop the Titan, let alone have it all ready to go for a last minute escape? Sure, it could have been that the planet was overcrowded and they needed a colony to help ease that. It makes me wonder where they'd originally had in mind for this since they gave the Titan and FTL drive that gave it an interstellar capability. The ship ends up becoming humanity's last hope, but it would have been nice to find out more about why the ship was built to begin with, because it's also apparently the reason Earth was destroyed by the Drej, which are aliens made of pure energy. Apparently the Drej feel so threatened by the Titan that they decide to exterminate humanity, and the first thing they do is blow up Earth. I don't know how humanity knows this, but it's what we're told. I also don’t understand why humans seem to be able to understand what the Drej are saying when they speak, but they do, so I guess the Drej could have said something before they blew up the planet.

And that's just the set-up; the actual story doesn't make a lot of sense either. The story follows a character named Cale Tucker (seems to be a popular name in sci-fi), who we see as a small boy the day Earth died. His father was behind Project Titan and took the space ark off to some hidden location just in the nick of time. Fortunately he thought to give his son a magic space ring that had a map to where he'd planned to hid the Titan, and which also acts as the key which starts the Genesis Device-I mean the transformation sequence. So this is why his dad leaves the ship and ends up getting killed, apparently along with everyone else who had gone with him on the giant ship. That makes sense, as does the Drej's obsession with wanting to find Titan and blow it up, since they were apparently afraid of what it could do to begin with. This is where Cale comes in, because apparently the Drej have figured out he has a map leading to the Titan, and naturally they want it. This also apparently takes 15 years for them to figure out, but later we find out why, and it involves something else that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Which, speaking of sense, since the Drej want to find where the Titan is, one would think they'd want to capture him, and later on they try to and succeed. Except the first time they spot him, they try to shoot him, repeatedly, and they even manage to hit him a couple of times. This is where the magic sci-fi guns come in, though, as the same gun that reduced one character to goo just gives Cale a couple of flesh wounds that take like a minute to patch up.

Fortunately, this seemingly Han Solo type named Joseph Korso who shows up on his cool ship named the Valkyrie to rescue him. Naturally this isn't a coincidence, and it was all part of a plan to help the Drej to find and destroy the Titan. Now, I'm not sure if the Drej showing up was all part of the plan to get Cale to go with or not. Cale was somewhat reluctant to do anything that might get him killed and all, even if he's yeaning for a way to get out of the crappy salvage yard he calls both home and work. He's become very pessimistic, losing his planet and the only remaining member of his family (apparently) and all. So having the Drej show up just kind of lit a fire under his ass, quite literally. The thing is, as I mentioned before, they sure seemed to be doing their damnedest to kill both Cale and Korso. So, what, did no one tell the Drej foot soldiers about the whole "capture that human because he has the only key to the ship we want to blow up" plan? Later on it's more obvious that the Drej are just trying to grab Cale on their own, because Korso bitches about this to them after they managed to capture Cale and copy the map. This is also where the bullshit heel face turn takes place.

One of the other potentially good things this movie had going for it was the crew of the Valkyrie. They were a somewhat rag-tag crew that seemed like they could be interesting. Since Joss Whedon had a hand in writing this, it isn't all that surprising that this crew reminded me a little of Serenity's crew from Firefly, though this movie predates that series. The thing I liked about them was just how natural they seemed to be. They had some minor annoyances with each other, and their own little quirks, and that made them seem interesting. But while they had their own little conflicts with each other, none of them really seemed like they were just itching to kill each other. This is part of where the movie doesn't make sense, because that bullshit heel face turn I mentioned drastically alters two of the characters, who suddenly become evil. I understand that Korso and his first mate being in league with the Drej was supposed to be a surprise and all, it's just that their attitude and actions don't match up with everything that came before this heel face turn. Up to that point, Korso actually seems to genuinely care about Cale, and even indulges the young man by letting him fly the Valkyrie during this cool eye candy scene. The first mate, Preed, up to that point seemed like a somewhat sarcastic but otherwise likeable character up to that point, but suddenly he wanted to kill Cale along with his other crewmates, who have presumably been together as a crew for some time, and Korso seems to be in agreement with this. Not only does he not say anything when Preed mentions he's going to blow up the other two crew members who somehow aren't in the know on the whole evil plan thing, but he threatens and assaults those crew members before that, and during his whole bitch session to the Drej he mentions how he'd like to kill Cale, and then tries his damnedest to do just that. Also part of this heel face turn is that now Cale is suddenly the champion of humanity's continued survival while Korso is the pessimist who sees no way of beating the Drej or for humanity to survive beyond the near future, and really only cares about himself and getting rich. Of course at the end of the movie, Korso makes the heroic sacrifice to save the day because, surprise, Preed made another separate deal with the Drej for his survival provided he kill Cale and the rest of his crew, and this just makes Korso change his mind again for whatever reason.

Naturally there's also something of a deux ex machine in that whereas the Drej's weaponry has been devastatingly destructive up until now, the Titan can suddenly be jury-rigged to convert the energy of the Drej as well as the energy of the Drej themselves to simultaneously power its reactors and make the new planet while killing all the Drej in the immediate area. As the movie ended, I couldn't help but note that this was just one ship, and it seemed entirely possible that more Drej could just show up later. I mean, the movie wasn't suggesting that this one ship and its fighters were the entirety of the Drej species, was it? Well, Wikipedia confirms this is the case, but given all the other face palm worthy aspects of this movie, it isn't all that surprising, it's just that it's stupid.

There were some other nitpicky things I didn't like either and I'd complain about, but this review is getting to be long enough as it is. The sad thing is, this movie could have been so much better. If it'd dropped all the kiddy comedy elements and had a plot that made more sense, it would have been a lot better. There's also the Valkyrie's crew, which had a lot of potential that just ended up being squandered. Rather than learn anything more about them or allow anyone other than Cale to undergo a little development, they were pretty much just there to set up a few jokes and to conveniently come to the rescue when Cale almost managed to get killed a few times. Oh, and the hot chick to fall into insta-love with Cale, you know, because. But just think of how much more interesting it could have been if the entire crew had been in on the deal with the Drej from the start. Sure, it wouldn't have been as much of a surprise when the evil plan was revealed, but there's a difference between surprise and just coming out of no where for no real reason. It also might have made the crew more sympathetic had there been a more realistic reason behind their deal that wasn't just about getting rich. Say they'd actually been nice and reasonable people to start out with and were forced into it somehow, and had to play along with the plan, all while actually kind of feeling sorry for Cale, and feeling bad about the whole betrayal of the whole human race thing? The crew could've even tried to keep him at something of a distance so they didn't get to know him too well in order to spare themselves some of the guilt. And if the hot chick, Akima Kunimoto, found herself being attracted to him in a not completely out of the blue manner, there even could have been a scene where the captain warned her against getting too close, to foreshadow the coming betrayal. Then it could have been a running theme to have Cale trying to figure out what the deal was, and seeming to make some progress with Akima or maybe even Korso at some points before being shut out again. You know, drama.

Also wasted were the Drej. They were some of the most alien aliens I've seen in a sci-fi, and they had the potential to be really interesting, what with the whole being made out of energy thing. Like if the movie had gone into their origin somewhat, and gave them some motivation for wanting to kill every single human being beyond just being ass hats. Unfortunately they just ended up being generic bad guys who were hard to kill, at least with normal hand-held laser guns, what with the whole being made out of energy thing. They even had a queen Drej who made typical bad guy speeches about killing every human being. And apparently all the Drej could fit on that one planet-killing ship from the beginning of the movie. Lame.

The voice talent was ok-ish. I did recognize a few of the voices right off the bat, but everyone sounded somewhat bland. I guess maybe since they'd read the script and decided to not even really bother putting any real effort into it. Speaking of bland, while the soundtrack is somewhat decent to listen to in its own, it also really dates this movie. I'd normally say something along the lines of doing something instrumental, but really the movie wasn't worth it. I'm actually not even sure why I bothered to mention it, other than that it kind of made me roll my eyes at times.

I'll throw this movie a bone, but really it's only because I feel a little sorry for it. Part of what sucks about this movie is that there was some really obvious potential there, and it just got wasted, which in some ways is even worse than if it'd just completely sucked. 3/10.

[CX]

Toward the Terra
(1980 movie)

Gads this movie was bad, in pretty much the same way the 1980 Cyborg 009 movie was bad – loads of corn and preaching without much of an interesting plot to hold it together. Actually I'd say the main problem with the plot is that there seemed to be way too much of it to fit into just one movie. I guess that didn't stop whoever made this from trying, though.

The story follows a young protagonist, Jomy Marcus Shin, as he's about to become an adult at the ripe old age of 14. This goes hand in hand with the backstory of most of humanity having escaped to the stars following the virtual destruction of Earth's environment and ecosystem. Following this, for no rational reason, they apparently decided to just let computers run everything. And not just any computers, but telepathic super-computers. As part of this Brave New Word (*cough*), humans are now "rationally" grown completely artificially and raised by random couples in a colony that's supposed to look like some random Earth city. Jomy is one of these people, and like a lot of young people he doesn't want to grow up just yet and he also questions the system, especially since the system is bent on taking him away from the parents he's grown to love. Unfortunately for him, the computers that run everything don't like being questioned and tend to have people like Jomy killed, especially if wiping their memories doesn't work. It doesn't help that Jomy is also a Mu, or a human who has developed telepathic and/or telekinetic abilities. The computers also hate those people and wages a campaign to have all of them killed.

Jomy is actually saved by the Mu, and is taken in by their leader who's actually named Soldier Blue for some reason. Anyway, naturally having been trained from a very young age to hate the Mu has made Jomy very resistant to being around the Mu, let alone accepting that he's actually one of them. That actually might've been an interesting story, but since they had to try to cram so much into this movie, that's over in like five minutes and Jomy actually ends up taking on Jomy's memories and leading the Mu. Convinced that there is a way the Mu can peacefully resolve their differences with the rest of humanity, he actually ends up leading the Mu to settle on a colony world that Earth had actually abandoned, where they then live out a luddite fantasy of farming and having kids the old fashioned way.

At one point we meet who's kind of the main antagonist but not really, Keith Anyan. Truth be told, his character was probably one of the worst handled of the bunch. He's supposed to be an "Elite", but basically he's a human who was rapidly grown to adulthood in a tank by the computer, specifically so he and others like him could be absolutely under the command and control of the "Grand Mother" computer that's running Earth, and to be resistant to the telepathic attacks of the Mu. To do this, he was apparently created from the ovum of one of the main Mu characters, a blind woman we meet not long into the movie, and seemingly just for that connection. Unfortunately this comes off as forced, as does the ambiguity they try to give Keith. I mean, they sort of try to make him sympathetic in that he seems to feel sorry at times for killing people when the computer orders him to, and he does rescue another adult human who just spontaneously becomes a Mu one day. On the other hand he's shown to be a completely cold bastard, and he does his damndest to exterminate the Mu even though they were just sitting minding their own business on that farm planet.

I guess the ambiguity comes from the fact that Keith eventually catches on to what's going on. Early on, he wonders aloud why the Mu are even allowed to be born, since all humans are now artificially created anyway, and the genes that produce them could in all likelihood be found and eliminated. This actually goes on to prove somewhat important later on, when Keith finally turns on the computer, though not before he follows its orders to shoot Jomy. It really wasn't all that surprising when the reason was revealed, which turned out to be so that humanity had a common enemy among them to keep fighting, and to keep relying on the computers to run everything for them.

There's also another character, Tony, who was one of the first naturally born among the Mu. He ends up leading the Mu on a campaign of slaughter himself while Jomy is conveniently sealed off from everyone. It's understandable what with how Keith is basically responsible for his mother's death, but to be fair Tony was also trying to kill Keith at the time, and that was when Tony as 5 years old. Then at the end of the movie, with the big bad computer destroyed, humanity in disarray, and the Mu having returned to Earth, Tony and a few of his fellow young people decide to head off on their own, because for some reason he figures they'll be the new enemy. It isn't really explained all that well, pretty much like everything else in this movie.

To be honest, I'm surprised I was able to write this much about such a stinker of a movie. I guess that's because I recognized that there was some potential here that just got lost in everything being crammed in all at once. On the other hand, it had one of those really preachy, anti-technology, pro-environment, "you shouldn't fight anyone even though they're trying to kill you" messages that I've seen more than once in sci-fi in general, but especially in sci-fi anime. 2/10.

[CX]

Okay, you need to watch this review and then watch the anime. Seriously. As a Trekkie, this anime would be perfect for you.

[CX]

Toward the Terra
(24 episode series)

This series was 200% better than the movie that came out almost 20 years before it. It actually managed to make the movie make more sense, though to be fair, being able to explain characters and what's going on in the story is a lot easier to do in a series than a movie thanks to actually having time to do so. It kind of makes me wonder why anyone would try to cram such a lengthy and complex story into a slightly less than 2 hour long movie, anyway. But enough about that.

The story of the series is probably 95% identical to the movie. We follow protagonist Jomy Marcus Shin on a very difficult coming of age story. The backstory here is that Earth's environment is ruined, and that Earth itself is basically abandoned save a few who are essentially guinea pigs to let humanity know when the planet has recovered enough for people to live there. In the mean time, along with becoming completely frakked up by letting a computer control every aspect of their lives, they've made a home for themselves on many other planets in many other systems. Jomy actually grows up along with every other human child on a planet specifically set aside for that, because the computer deems children to chaotic to allow them to be born and brought up the normal way. Instead, they are grown artificially and raised by couples who have no blood relation to them. When they reach age 14, they have to take an exam to enter the next stage of their lives, the exam being to see if they are actually a normal human or not, and to erase their memories. Oh, and resist that or question any part of this rigid system, and end up getting killed.

That's what almost happened to Jomy, as he failed the "actually a normal human" part of the exam along with the getting his memories erased part. Fortunately for him, he's rescued by a group of telepaths/telekinetics who call themselves the Mu. The Mu are hunted down and killed without mercy by normal humans at the behest of the oddly emotional computer called Grand Mother which runs everything through numbered Terra computers. For the most part humans do so without question, as they've been brainwashed into seeing the Mu as their enemy, what with the whole being able to read minds thing and being damn dirty mutants. So, as one would expect, Jomy actually isn't happy with being taken in by the Mu and in fact believes they interfered and caused the situation he's in as far as being a hunted individual. It also didn't help that they all bombarded him with their telepathic mojo as soon as he stepped on board their huge whale ship.

The Mu are initially lead by a character named Soldier Blue, so named because he's the head warrior of the group, and because of the type of telepathic./telekinetic power he has, which is quite powerful. He and his people have been hanging out in a huge ship they call the Shangri-La, but everyone else calls Moby Dick due to its resemblance to a giant white whale. The series actually differs a bit from the movie here in that this is their only ship for the most part, and it actually kind of looks cool instead of completely fugly. Anyway, they hang out in the clouds of this child-rearing planet in order to rescue kids like Jomy who get found out to be Mu, hopefully before they actually get found out. This doesn't work out so well for them when they rescue Jomy because they get found out and have to leave the planet.

Jomy ends up becoming the leader of the Mu, having inherited the job and the memories from Soldier Blue. Blue isn't doing very well as he's actually 300 years old and he never had a very strong body to begin with. He ends up staying in a coma until it's convenient for him to heroically sacrifice his life, after giving Jomy the cool headphones. In the meantime, Jomy's childhood friends have passed their adulthood exams and have become students at one of apparently several high school/university stations used for the final education of humans designed to fit them into a cog within society. It also just so happens this is the station experimenting with making designer humans who are resistant to psychic attacks in addition to being obedient and unemotional pricks. This is where we meet Keith Anyan, said prick.

Actually, the nice thing about Keith is that while it's obvious that he's supposed to be the bad guy, and they really drill it into our heads that humanity has become Nazis, they do show a sympathetic side to him through his friendship to Sam Houston (possibly more than friends in Keith's head), who was actually Jomy's best friend during their childhood. There are times that he's both a complete monster, and yet it's slowly revealed that he's simply acting this way, and truly does regret the vast majority of the things he's done. It's bit confusing why he still does them, but I love the complexity in the character, as I do in any character for that matter. It's just too bad about the Nazi thing


Space Nazis – a staple of sci-fi since 1946.

I guess they thought they had to make it really obvious that humanity was Nazis to make sure that we knew the Mu were supposed to be space Jews instead of space gays, which really, if you think about it, it could totally be interpreted that way. Not only are they usually found out in the beginning of puberty, but even though they're still the same exact people they always were, they suddenly get treated like monsters by everyone they've trusted their entire lives. But really you could insert any minority group there and it would work; I just found something to amuse myself with a little bit. That and how practically every sound effect has been ripped off from either Star Trek or Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Really though, the whole argument about who's a monster is one of the best things about this show, because really both sides have shown they can be monsters. The humans as monsters part is pretty obvious, but while the Mu start out being more of the mind to run and hide out, they also tend to treat people different from themselves like crap. Jomy at first exhibited no outward sign of being a Mu, then turned out to be even more powerful than all the rest of them. While some were cool with him and even really admired him, there were also plenty of them that treated him like a freak. Then later on there were some other really powerful Mu that looked down on the other Mu because they thought themselves so superior, and even suggested killing Jomy and all the Mu elders. Then Jomy leads the Mu on a war of attrition in which he orders the wholesale slaughter of humans, even if they try to surrender. The only exception he makes is for a woman who was a friend of his as a child. Even some of the Mu are appalled at this, though many others are totally for it because of how humans tried to slaughter them.

There's a definite parallel drawn between Jomy and Keith as well. Both go through journeys in which they learn the truth about their paths and lament how things have come to pass, though each of them reacts to it differently. This is another aspect of the story I liked, even if it was kind of hammered in as a completely obvious parallel. Both men had protégés they'd rescued as well, though Jomy definitely treats his much better. He's actually fortunate for that, because Tony, the first naturally born Mu, is so fiercely loyal to him that when the others like him suggest taking over the Mu through a bloody coup, he makes them fall into line and stop talking like that. Keith, on the other hand, has Jonah Matsuka, a Mu who gets found out long after he should have been, but stays loyal to Keith despite Keith treating him like crap and intimating that he's be killed soon after the Mu were wiped out. One of them dies to save their leader while the other becomes the leader of their people. Can you guess which one?

So the Mu eventually make it back to Earth, only to find out that 300 years apparently hasn't been long enough to restore the planet. This contrasts it with the movie, which showed that the planet had mostly recovered. Of course the series stops just shy of blowing Earth up in the climax of the series, and the Mu end up having to leave until Earth can recover, made all the more difficult by the set-back Grand Mother's destruction caused. Also, while Keith asked early on in the movie's story about why the Mu simply aren't prevented from being born rather than being hunted down, this question is saved for the series's climax. Really the answer is much more obvious since it actually makes more sense than the odd explanation the movie seemed to give. Basically the idea was to see if the Mu actually were the next step in human evolution by making the Mu and humanity fight each other to see which would go extinct and which would survive. So basically Darwin taken to the extreme.

Overall, I really did find this series satisfying. It had a nice even pace that didn't drag too much or try to pacify with action or fan service. Actually there wasn't even much fan service to speak of, which was refreshing in a way. It had complex, interesting characters and a story that, while it could also be simplistic in some areas, was fairly complex and interesting as well. Mostly its weaknesses come from the anvil-to-the-head environmental message which is combined with the anti-technology message that stems from a premise that doesn't really make all that much sense. It may just be a personal bias, but I can't see humanity handing over everything to a computer that kills them if they try to step out of line. Talk about a robo-Hitler. I would still recommend this series though, despite its flaws, because really it doesn't ruin the story. 8/10.

[CX]

Shiki
(24 + 2 episode series)

This series was both good and somewhat disappointing. It was good in that it had an interesting story and somewhat interesting characters which kept me watching, but disappointing in how the majority of those characters reacted to what went on around them, as well as in how the series ultimately ended.

This story is a little like Higurashi in that it takes place in a small, geographically isolated village, and that a lot of bad things happen to good people. In this case, ironically enough (on purpose, no doubt), Sotoba is a quiet little village that is famous for having a certain type of tree that gets used a lot to make grave markers and coffins. Also like Higurashi, rather than taking place in modern day, it takes place at some point in the past, in this case the 1990's. That's about where the similarities end, though, aside from having some little children which turn out to be evil because of what happens to them. There are no time-loops or take-backs, though, just a lot of dead people.

This series has something of an ensemble cast, but focuses mainly on three characters: Natsuno, a high school boy who's also a prick, Dr. Ozaki, dean of the small hospital in Sotoba, and his friend since childhood, Seishin, a local junior priest who also writes novels on the side. The story starts soon after an old traditional mansion on one of the local hills was torn down and replaced with a western-style castle. No, really, a castle.


Nothing forbidding about this at all.

It was built by a family of rich outsiders, who also move in during the middle of the night, rather rudely awakening some people so they can ask directions. Still, all most people complain about is how the castle doesn't really fit in with the rest of the village, and how the new people pretty much keep to themselves and otherwise act so strangely.

Shortly before their arrival, there had been a number of strange deaths which left an isolated part of the village, which is spread out over a valley, completely vacant. Then, soon after they arrived, the local moe blob who thinks she's destined for greater things, goes missing after approaching the castle and is found to be in a strange lethargic state. Soon afterwards, she dies. While I was hoping this would be a permanent death and the story would be done with her, this series is actually about vampires, as you might have guessed what with the castle and all that. It seems this "family" of vampires, the Kirishikis, has decided that Sotoba would make the perfect place make a safe haven for their kind, and soon set about feeding upon the locals. Unlike most vampire movies, it takes several feedings to kill a victim, who even then might not necessarily reawaken as a vampire. Pretty much all the other movie myths are shown to be right, though, and as an added bonus these vampires are not like the fangirl fap material that Anne Rice novels and the Twilight movies have made them into more recently.

So initially, no one knows what is going on, except of course that an unusual number of people seem to be getting sick and dying. Dr. Ozaki initially thinks he has some kind of epidemic on his hands, and gets pretty stressed out trying to figure out what it is and how to combat it all while trying to keep it a secret so people don’t panic and possibly spread it further. To complicate matters, the people who are sick insist they are simply fighting off a summer cold and refuse to be treated. This is because while a single feeding isn't enough to turn someone into a vampire, just being bitten means they can be hypnotized by the vampires to do and say whatever they wish. This actually made for a pretty gripping story, even though the audience is fully aware of what's going on even as the characters struggle against what they think is an epidemic of some kind. It actually takes a while for the bites to be seen, and even then these are taken to be insect bites and therefore a possible vector.

In the meantime, Natsuno has been getting the feeling that the moe blob who liked to dress like a slut and had a creepy stalker crush on him, is still stalking him from the bushes outside of his window. He reacts by hanging out at basically his only friend's house, sleeping over there at night to avoid feeling like he's being watched, and having strange dreams. Unfortunately for him his stalker follows him and takes her frustration out on his friend, who soon dies. I'd feel sorry for him and all, but he is an asshole and I never took a liking to him. I'm not sure if the audience was supposed to find him all "stoic" and therefore admirable, but I just thought he was a jerk. However, he is the first to figure out what's going on, since he basically witnesses his stalker come into the room and feed on his friend, though at first he thinks this is nothing but a dream. It also kind of comes back on him, too, because his family is from the city, so while Natsuno figures out what is happening and his best friend comes back to feed on him, his father undoes everything he does to try to protect himself.

While Natsuno is feeling watched, Seishin is likewise being stalked, but this time by a little girl who follows him out to his secret hideout in the woods, a small church. He at first thinks she's just a strange little girl, but she keeps dropping hints that she isn't quite normal and is actually much older than she says she is. She's also a fangirl for him, and has totally read all of his books.


Isn't she just the cutest little killer you ever saw?

While I think Seishin had an inkling (and who wouldn’t with eyes like that), he only really accepts it when Dr. Ozaki also starts to figure things out and asks his old friend to help him keep watch on a patient overnight, because he's convinced she's being fed upon. This is when both of them see a local woman who they both knew to be dead, hovering outside of the second story window of the patient's room, asking to be let in so she can feed. The two of them naturally resolve to save this woman, but the next night the vampires conduct an overt attack on the clinic, which unfortunately only Dr. Ozaki and Seishin are around to witness. They all attack the patient and kill her, but leave the doctor and the junior priest for now, basically telling them to back off or the same will happen to them. And this is where the two characters react differently. Seishin is a pacifist, so he elects to basically do nothing, and is disgusted at Ozaki for suggesting that they capture one of the vampires so he can conduct tests on them.

And really, this is where the show tries to get all moralistic and argue something that really doesn't make much sense to me. Basically, it tries to humanize the vampires by having them argue that they didn't exactly ask to be vampires, which is a valid point, but they then go on to argue that since they have to feed to stay alive, humans are no different than animals to them. This is not a valid argument, even though it's one that PETA tries to argue all the time. The difference is that humans are sentient beings, and animals are not. The vampires also refuse to seek any alternative solution which wouldn't require them killing human beings to feed. This makes them a threat, and frankly I don't have much sympathy for them, despite the show's best attempts to play up the tragedy of the vampires. It's true that some of them met tragic ends, and this is especially the case for the vampires who then go on to refuse to feed on anyone. But where I lose sympathy is when they try to use this tragedy as an excuse to kill others, who either stay dead, or are reborn into the same living hell.

Since both Natsuno and Dr. Ozaki have determined that they will try to fight the vampires, the vampires have decided to kill or otherwise punish the two of them. Natsuno is the most proactive and is actually recruiting some of the other students who agree with him, so they take him out first. Just to drive this home, they send his friend to do it, and while he initially doesn't seem like he can go through with it, despite threats from the other vampires against his family, he does go through with it. Luckily for Natsuno, he doesn't either die or turn into a normal vampire. Instead, he turns into a werewolf, though here a werewolf is basically what Blade is in that franchise – he has none of the weaknesses of the other vampires, and all of their strengths, or at least he would if he fed on humans. The Kirishikis also have a couple of werewolves in their employ, who basically have been doing all of the dirty work for them, so that plays out somewhat interestingly.

When it came to Dr. Ozaki, however, they decided to punish him by feeding on his wife. This was a rather stupid move on their part, because as it turns out, Dr. Ozaki is despicably pragmatic, so his reaction is to let them kill his wife, so he can them watch to see if she rises, and then conducts a series of experiments on her in order to figure out how to kill the vampires. So basically he tortures his own wife to death. And while the cold, calculating part of myself kind of agrees with what he did, I also agree with his friend Seishin, who was just disgusted at what he had done, and how unapologetic he was about it. But while Ozaki now fully knows what he's up against, he then goes on to do nothing. While he had all of this evidence he could have sent to the outside world while that was still possible, he didn't, so when he was finally bitten by one of the Kirishikis, he ends up destroying most of this evidence under her hypnotic control.

Really, things only came together at a point when I was just about to give up on this series out of disgust. And while the bad guys winning doesn't necessarily turn me off to a show by itself, in this case I was getting fed up because no one who knew what was going on was really doing anything about it. It was getting to a point that I felt that the people of this village deserved what was happening to them since they refused to do anything about it. Hell, Seishin actually goes to live with the Kirishikis, which is supposed to be him "accepting" them for what they were.

Thankfully, things finally happened. As it turned out, Natsuno had planned on this happening along with Dr. Ozaki, who manages to self-treat himself with a blood transfusion so he can free himself from the hypnosis he's under. He then fools his attacker into thinking he's still under her control, and convinces her into checking out a festival the village is throwing that night at the local temple. As it turns out, the shrine actually weakens her, and Ozaki uses this to out her in front of what's left of the village, who then resolve to kill all of the vampires in order to defend themselves. The odd thing here is that the doctor insists that they do this secretly, without involving the outside world. And this is where a lot more tragedy plays out.

While the series really wants the audience to feel for the vampires, with most of them I really can't, as I explained earlier. So really the only tragedy I feel comes from those who were recently turned into vampires and refuse to feed, but are killed along with the others anyway. There are also a number of people who were killed who didn't have to be, because some of the villagers get too overzealous and either didn't pay attention to Dr. Ozaki's explanation that people who were bitten don't turn into vampires unless they die and therefore kill anyone who is bitten by vampires as they attack them, or argue that the bitten are collaborators since they are acting under the direction of the vampires and therefore should be killed anyway, even though they are nothing more than victims. As the series is winding down, all the temple people end up being murdered as collaborators as well, because Seishin, who was a collaborator, hid in another part of the temple grounds and they knew nothing about it. So really, tragic all around, unlike all the vampires who convinced themselves that their friends and family along with every other living human being were all cattle and it was totally cool for them to kill them as such, only to have some of these "cattle" visit it back upon them now.

For me, the disappointing part comes from how the series ends, so if you don't want to be spoiled anymore than what this review has already given away, just skip the next paragraph.

Basically, the entire village is burnt to the ground, making the entire ordeal the villagers have gone through in order to wipe out the vampires to protect their village is all for nothing. While the outside world naturally gets brought into the area to put the fire out, the fire did succeed at destroying all evidence of the slaughter the villagers were carrying out, it also destroyed all the evidence Dr. Ozaki collected and any evidence they might have which the outside world might actually find useful, considering that vampires exist and all. Then there's the way the pre-teen vampire fangirl and the recently converted Seishin manage to escape during all the confusion with the fire. And that’s how the series ends. Hell of a note, isn't it?

When it comes to the characters, it's really a mixed bag. As I said, it's an ensemble, so there are a lot of characters the series follows. I find that this actually works somewhat against the series as it becomes difficult to keep all of them straight, let alone to remember all of their names. There are also some characters who only seem to exist so we can hate them and actually want them to die horrible deaths, which they do, twice. For me, though, the most interesting dynamic is in the character of Dr. Ozaki, because while he's more or less a good guy, he does some pretty horrible things, and to his own wife to boot. And while both Ozaki and Seishin have an interesting background which explains why each is the way they are as far as how others have expectations of them which lock them into lives neither of them wants, Seishin is a coward and frankly I found myself wishing bad things would happen to him.

Overall, I'd say that I did like this series, though. It was refreshing to see something with vampires that actually depicted them as monsters instead of as love interests for once. So while there were still aspects of the show I didn't like, I'd still recommend this one to others, even though it isn't exactly among my favorites. 7/10.

[CX]

The Vision of Escaflowne
(26 episode series)

My first experience with this series actually came with the heavily edited version Fox Kids aired during the summer before my senior year of high school. As soon as I saw it I was interested in it, but soon afterwards Fox cancelled it, much to my disappointment at the time. I actually went looking for the series on DVD, but since Fox Kids had changed the name along with everything else, I didn't realize what I was actually looking for. As you can see, though, I eventually figured it out and I've finally gotten around to watching it the way it was supposed to be seen. The story is definitely better and makes a bit more sense, but I have to admit that I liked the Fox Kids opening better than the original one.

The setting of this show is kind of an anachronistic mix between a medieval fantasy land with dragons and a kind of steampunk world that uses technology that is seemingly out of place there. This is how they're able to have giant mechas in an otherwise non-technological setting, I guess. Actually it's kind of cool because the story lets itself touch on various aspects of how these things came to be, and a lot of it has to do with the main antagonist, Emperor Dornkirk of the Zaibach Empire. They also have a kind of natural levitating stone that many of the locals have used to harness the power of flight for everything from a small plane-sized craft up to floating castles.

The series itself focuses on a female protagonist, Hitomi Kanzaki from Japan. She was a mostly typical high school student (those sure do seem common in anime) up until the male lead, Van Fanel, king of Fanelia, appears in a pillar of light, followed shortly afterwards by a dragon. I say "mostly typical" because the series explains that she's always had something of a psychic gift, though until the series starts, this has been limited to tarot card readings. Shortly before Van shows up, she starts having full on visions. To make a long story short, she ends up being taken back with Van to his home planet, Gaea, on the surface of which can be seen both the moon and Earth, which the locals call the Mystic Moon. And if the dragon showing up wasn't weird and threatening enough, some furries show up and greet them.

At first there isn't a whole lot that happens, but soon Fanelia is invaded by invisible mechas, called guymelefs, from the Zaibach Empire. This also introduces us to Dilandau Albatou, a rather young and bloodthirsty antagonist who leads a special forces group called the Dragon Slayers on this attack. Fanelia falls and is burned to the ground, but Van and Hitomi escape. This actually provides much of the excitement and drama early on, as Van and Hitomi try to escape from Dilandau and the other Zaibach forces that have been sent after them by Emperor Dornkirk. Dornkirk has some kind of massive "fate" machine he is using for seemingly evil ends and he sees Van's guymelef Escaflowne as a threat due to its somewhat mystical nature. It's actually technologically inferior to Zaibach's guymelefs, which can shoot fire and use a liquid metal to form spikes and swords not unlike the T-1000 from Terminator 2. Van also isn't exactly the best fighter either, but Hitomi is able to help level the playing field with her psychic abilities, such as being able to see through the invisibility cloaks Dilandau and his forces use.

Once Van and Hitomi meet up with second male protagonist Allen Schezar, the story becomes much bigger, as there is now a fight on with the entirety of Gaea at risk. Not only is Zaibach seemingly bent on world conquest with a technologically superior military, but the planet itself is apparently at risk from the same technology that had destroyed Atlantis.

That's right, Atlantis was apparently behind the creation of Gaea, following the destruction of Atlantis itself. This is also why there's apparently so much going on with dimensional rifts on Gaea, as well as between Gaea and Earth. Van's mother was actually one of the decedents of the Atlantians, called Draconian by all the normal humans on Gaea due to the wings they sport and the seeming black magic of their technology and abilities to alter luck and fate. This means that Van himself, as well as his apparently turncoat brother, Folken Fanel, also sport wings.

I don’t think there's much more I can say about the story and the setting without just summarizing the entire series, so I'm going to stop while I'm ahead. I'll just say that it was a really interesting story that took place in an intriguing world. The pacing of the story itself was nice and even, never dragging to slow as it explained and set things up, or surrendering entirely to the action and battles that also took place.

The characters were also very interesting, and even though there are quite a few of them, they all tend to stand out on their own enough to be memorable. As you might guess, not all that many of them get developed much, but what development does take place is, for the most part, pretty good. Hitomi herself is a refreshingly different female protagonist in that while the male leads at times get pushy and want to exploit her powers more, will stand up for herself and refuse. She does tend to get kidnapped a lot, and can't really defend herself outside of her psychic abilities, but it's worth noting that she wasn't at the complete beck and call of the male leads either, especially since the visions she had took something of a toll on her.

Van and Allen are also somewhat interesting characters with complex backgrounds, though at times they seemed a little underdeveloped. Allen is basically the noble knight type, a natural leader who's easy to like. However, he hates his father for going off in search of the Mystic Valley of the Draconians and never returning, as soon afterwards his mother also died and left him and his sister alone. Then not long after that, his sister disappeared. This did serve to give him a connection to Van, however, as Van's mentor also finds Allen and mentors him. As for Van, he's somewhat different in that he doesn't like to fight, though he is soon hardened by having to do so.

The antagonists are also given somewhat interesting backgrounds, too, and even made not so completely evil. Take Van's brother, Folken. Not only did he defect to Zaibach when he was supposed to be doing the dragon hunt we later see Van go on in order to become king, but he also ends up leading the attack that would end up razing Fanelia to the ground. Van ends up hating his brother for good reason because of that and because of his continued efforts to capture Van along with Escaflowne. But it's also completely obvious that Folken still cares for his brother, and after Emperor Dornkirk shows what a cold bastard he is, Folken later comes over to his brother's side.

Then there's bloodthirsty Dilandau. He totally comes off as the stereotypical stuck up royal pain in the ass to go along with being a completely evil bastard who likes killing and destroying. But he also has an interesting background, and even before we learn it, the series actually manages to paint him in a semi-sympathetic light by having him go through a mental breakdown following the wholesale slaughter of his Dragon Slayer squad by Van. And then we find out "he" is actually Allen's lost sister, who was turned into the bloodthirsty Dilandau by Dornkirk's scientists through cruel experimentation. It also kind of complicates things when this is revealed to Allen.

Hell, even Emperor Dornkirk is given some ambiguity to his character, even though he's easily still one of the most evil of the main characters. It's strongly hinted at that he's actually Isaac Newton, resurrected on Gaea through sheer force of will alone upon his death on Earth. When he first appears in Zaibach, it's basically a third world country, and he helps them to become a world power through his scientific knowledge. So basically he's a Hitler analogue, but unlike Hitler he isn't after world domination so much as he actually wants to create a peaceful world where everyone can be granted their wishes. Unfortunately, he's so obsessed with the Atlantian technology to make this happen that he no longer cares about human life, and will kill anyone who gets in his way. His conquering of other kingdoms is solely aimed at getting what he needs for the machine he's built, but that doesn't change the fact Zaibach has devastated so much of Gaea.

What it comes down to is that everyone is given believable motivations for what they are doing during the story.

That being said, this series isn't without its own weaknesses. The first one is kind of understandable in that while the pace wasn't exactly all that fast, they didn't want to slow things down too much. This resulted in a lot of things happening solely for the benefit of the story. Right off the bat, there's no explanation for how or why Van and the dragon ended up on Earth, or most of the other times they're conveniently transported somewhere by a beam of light. Then there are things like Dilandau/ Celena ending up where he/she need to be so Allen can see the change take place to know that Dilandau is actually his sister, right before being conveniently beamed back to Zaibach.

For me, though, the biggest weakness of this series was the soap opera romance story. Basically Hitomi already likes a guy on Earth when she ends up being spirited away to Gaea. It also just so happens that Allen looks a lot like this guy, so she ends up having a crush on him. But then, Van is the male lead and the first guy from Gaea she ever met, and since they both end up saving each other's lives more than once, she also has a crush on him. So the series tries to make this dramatic by bouncing her between her love for each of these three guys, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at all of it. I can tell that this was a story element aimed at the teenaged girls in the audience, but in my opinion it rang false and actually hurt the story and the characters a bit. It was also completely obvious who she was going to end up deciding on.

Oh, and just in case the teenaged male demographic felt left out on the whole pointless fan service area, the show gave them this:

Not only are they furries, but they're twin sisters. I'm sure some people will like this, but I didn't. At least the bottom one there wasn't really into it. Eh, it's not like they end up being all that important anyway, aside from helping Folken to switch sides again.

Anyway, I can definitely say that for the most part I really like this series. It has something that can probably appeal to most anyone, and even though its age is showing a bit, it's still very enjoyable to watch. I would definitely recommend this series, especially if you can get into medieval fantasy stories. 8/10.

[CX]

Voices of a Distant Star
(single episode OVA)

Unfortunately, while I kind of liked this OVA, there isn't a lot I can say about it, because there simply isn't a lot there. The OVA itself is only 25 minutes long, and much like Pale Cocoon, it left me wishing that there was more. It also leaves its protagonist with an uncertain fate that actually looks kind of bad for them.

The story is about a long-distance relationship between Mikako Nagamine and her boyfriend, Noboru Terao, and by "long-distance", I mean interplanetary and then interstellar. By some magic their cell phones' texting abilities are still able to reach out across this impossible distance to allow Mikako to talk to Noboru, though the texts only travel at the speed of light, meaning her messages, though sent out basically one right after the other, reach Earth at longer and longer spans of time apart. So for the most part the story focuses on this drama. In fact, the plot, which is about a war between humanity and an alien race known as the Tarsians is actually pretty much in the background. That's somewhat unfortunate, because there was so much there that I found interesting. Actually, while I like character drama, I feel that in this case too much emphasis was placed on it here, because while character drama can really add to a story, when it becomes the story itself it tends not to be as good or as interesting in my opinion.

There are some problems I have with the show aside from that misplaced focus, but for the most part this is detail oriented thanks to that misplaced focus. For instance, Mikako is 15 years old, but she was recruited by the United Nations Space Army to go fight aliens with giant mecha (called Tracers here). So basically this is one of those animes that Sky Crawlers was criticizing along with other shows, like Evangelion. Maybe there would have been some convoluted explanation for the UN using children as combat pilots as well, and maybe even the laughable use of giant humanoid mecha in space, but for me these are both weak points against shows like these. This is actually somewhat heightened by the fact Mikako doesn't wear a military uniform, but instead stays in the same skirted school uniform we see her in during the flashback that takes up most of the OVA.

As for the characters, well, again, there just isn't much to go off of. I mean, they're both sad at their separation, but that's about all we can get out of it other than that they both also undergo a little growth – Mikako is a little hardened by her combat experience and Noboru goes from being depressed because he initially flunked out of the Self-Defense Force and was thus separated from Mikako to working hard to get into it at the end of the OVA. He's also pretty much gotten over her by that point, or so it seems, and who can blame him?

This OVA was interesting enough to watch, but I can't help but feel a bit indifferent about it because there just isn't much there. Maybe if this had been a pilot to a fully-fledged show it might have been better, but that just isn't the case unfortunately, and it feels like the show ended without a resolution. And as for the character drama, well, I've seen this kind of stuff before and it really wasn't all that special on its own, so I just didn't really get emotionally involved at all. It isn't bad exactly, but it didn't impress me either. 6/10.