Movie Review: Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade

Wow sorry folks, a perfect storm of other obligations and impossible to predict events that dominated my time (who would've expected the post office to lose/steal THREE of my packages in one month?!). Which is almost fitting since I also got around to watching this special a year after it came out, I'm sure someone announced when it went up on Netflix and I just missed it. I also didn't see it earlier since I didn't back the kickstarter, I could see it was going to be funded just fine and I was still a cash-strapped college student at that point (which seems weird to write since I graduated a couple of years ago now!). 

Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade

Anime Review: Kyousogiga ONA Series

Last December a one-shot OVA came out from Toei which was sorta-kinda a Buddhist themed Alice in Wonderland story, ish, which I really enjoyed and wanted more of. So I was happy when a series was announced and then saddened when I learned it was going to just be five OVAs from August to December. There's also a manga adaptation out there it turns out which also helps fill in the gaps between when Koto came to mirror Kyoto (which was the end of the first episode here, from now on episodes here will be referred to as  season two) and the original OVA, none of the materials is recycled in the second season or the OVA so fans of those should check that out as well.


Kyousogiga

Summary: Less a sequel to the OVA and more an all over the place prequel, season two focuses on fleshing out the major players from the OVA and talking more about the strangeness of Mirror Kyoto.

The Good: There were a lot of questions I had after the original OVA (not that it was bad, just that it deliberately left a lot untold) and this season answered quite a few of them and some other questions I hadn't even thought to ask. Most of it was character related, although it did help flesh out just how odd Mirror Kyoto is as well and I enjoyed it. I didn't think that any of the episodes were wasted, although I would've chosen to focus on different thing for a few of them, and it showed that the OVA wasn't just a one-off thing, the writer(s?) really do have some interesting ideas and I'd like to see more of it. 

The Bad: Ack, so short! I think the longest episode was only 12 minutes and I'm really sad that this idea hasn't been given a full series which details the story from start (wherever they think it should start, technically this series went back to the very beginning) to some sort of end beyond where the OVA did. All of this world and character building is quite nice, don't get me wrong, but there seemed to be a few rumblings of an underlying plot and I'd love to see what it really is. So, financial backers, get on this please, I want more!

The Audio: There were only two new characters with large speaking roles so there wasn't much change from the OVA. Everyone still sounds just fine, all of the characters have a wider range of emotions than you'd expect out of a short series and all of the actors did a fine job at making the characters sound like themselves no matter what was going on . 

The Visuals: I only found some low-quality streams to watch so I don't know if the show looked quite as nice as the OVA did, it did seem a bit less detailed but the OVA was extraordinarily detailed so that's no surprise and not a failing either. Everything still felt as creative as the OVA however so I'm satisfied regardless, I can live with a less detailed series as long as it feels like the team put just as much effort into it quite happily.

I'm not sure I can even rate this series given how short it was, hopefully it will suffice to say that yes I liked it and if you have a few spare hours to check out the original OVA and this season, it'll take less than three hours and it'll be a fun three hours. And, if you have the time, give the manga a look as well (as I mentioned earlier, none of the mediums repeat any of the stories so it's all new and the manga also really helped flesh things out for me, now if only they would put all of this together into one, cohesive story). 

Anime Review: Tokyo Babylon OVAs

While I was watching X TV it occurred to me that I should check these two little OVAs out since, as I'm not reading the Tokyo Babylon scans since it is licensed in the US (Dark Horse, are these omnibus editions coming out anytime soon?) and I've started following a few people on tumblr who lately have been talking about the series an awful lot. I'm a little curious about the live action movie made based off of TB (which I only found out even existed this past summer, I've almost never seen people talk about it) but for the moment my curiosity has been satiated.

Tokyo Babylon

Summary: Subaru Sumeragi is an omyonji in Tokyo who spends his days dealing with spirits and other magical things as well as spending time with the only two people he's close to, his twin sister Hokuto and their friend Seishiro (a local veterinarian). Subaru cares a lot about his job and tries to help people no matter what, often putting his own safely on the line. 

The Good: I'm not sure if the two stories were based on stories from the manga but considering how well they were paced I'm inclined to think they were original stories. Both stories were rather different from each other, interesting, and in an odd way it reminded me of why I liked xxxHolic, Clamp just seems to be better at writing more episodic series than plot-central ones. I did enjoy these two shorts, even if I was wincing at some of the weird 1980s styles that had crept in, and wish it had been a full series, partially because of a problem I'm about to bring up below.  

The Bad: If you don't know anything about TB this is not the series for you, while it briefly touches on Subaru and Seishiro's connection (which ends up being a huge deal later in the story) it's still rather vague. The stories here don't require you to know much about the characters but when they don't explain anything at all it's clear who the show is aimed at. As I mentioned last week with X, that show works a bit better if you know more of Subaru's backstory and, since that is explained there, I could see these OVAs working if someone was to watch them and immediately follow them up with X to get a better grasp on how Subaru has changed in the 7+ years that separate the two. Other than that I really can't recommend this to anyone who hasn't already seen it, it just doesn't have that wide an appeal when it's almost completely lacking in backstory/explanations.   

The Audio: I about started snickering when the first OVA had a classic, let's-play-music-over-unrelated-images moment, such an 80s thing to do (heck, even the way a lot of shots are framed in the series feel not exactly dated but old school). I was a bit surprised that Subaru was actually voiced by a male voice actor (I've just gotten so used to hearing female VAs do male roles) but it really worked well. Hokuto was rather screechy early on but thankfully mellowed down by the end of the first OVA and the rest of the (Japanese, I don't think there's a dub) was fine. 

The Visuals: Please note the above image has nothing to do with the actual OVAs, it was the best thing I could find on google that wasn't a screenshot (or involve some of the story's more, interesting, outfits). In any case,  I watched this on an incredibly crappy stream (which occasionally had subs when people weren't talking/saying something different than what the characters actually were saying) so I don't really know what to say about how the OVAs looked. They're from 1992 and I'd imagine that they'd look fine if they were remastered although I did see some weird looking animation in places. Aside from that, and I've already established that these OVAs were channeling the 80s like it was going out of style (wait), the only thing I have left to say is that yes, Subaru is pretty damn adorable and one I would actually call moe (and I'm nigh-positive I'm not the only person who would say that).

So, hasn't aged that well in terms of looks (although if it was remastered that would help) and has a narrow appeal, come to think of it you can probably apply those statements to a lot of Clamp shows (or will be able to in another decade or so). I had fun with this but hopefully next week I'll finally be back to shows where I can whole-heartedly recommend them to people.

Anime Review: Break Blade

Well, at least I warned that this review would be late. For those who haven't seen my twitter, I had double club meetings Tuesday and the mandatory second part ran much longer than I was expecting so believe me, I would have rather been writing this review.

In any case, I first heard about this series at an end of the year wrap-up some of the staffers on ANN wrote and one of them mentioned a series of OVAs he wanted to see brought over which were an interesting mix of fantasy and mecha which they hadn't seen before (to which the forums responded, "um, Escaflowne?"). Initially I just read the manga online (which I didn't even realize had been licensed by CMX at one point) and didn't have the urge to try out the OVAs but eventually I did and watched them at my own pace (hence why this review is so much later than everyone else who has also covered this series). The structure is a bit odd, it's six OVAs (which covers roughly 50 chapters of the manga, almost everything that has been currently published) which were released in theaters first and then put on DVD/BR which I've seen a few other series do lately (Towa no Quon and I think Gundam Unicorn might be doing something similar). I've seen people speculate that we might start seeing fewer tv shows and more OVAs since that's easier on people's budgets and I wouldn't mind that change as much if they had more OVA series like this.

Break Blade

Summary: Set far into the future when Japan is mostly desert and people have gained the magical ability to levitate quartz, a skill they use in almost every aspect of their lives, Rygart is unusual because he can't and lives with his similarly un-gifted brother as outcasts. He is an old friend of the king and his wife however and comes to the capital when they summon him to look at a strange and ancient golem (mech) which might become the key in the war that was just declared against their country.

The Good: Sometimes it bothers me when a series involves a lot of fighting and there either is no collateral damage at all or it never bothers the main characters at all. Break Blade averts this hard with several side and important characters dying and from the start the series seems to show, without beating the viewer over the head with it, that war is not a cool thing. It's hardly a realistic depiction of war but that added bit of realism that many anime lack is a nice thing. Speaking of added realism, finally a mecha story where the characters are actually in their 20s! Several of the characters are even in relationships, happy and non-happy ones, which again is so odd to see in this genre that it's refreshing. Also refreshing is seeing several female characters in both militaries who aren't just the token female character but competent soldiers. Again, this shouldn't be something unusual but it is and it's details like that that help me enjoy a series more. 

The Bad: Since the story compresses 50 chapters of the manga into the equivalent of 12 or 13 episodes it's understandable that some stuff had to get cut, especially towards the end, but unfortunately it was all stuff I liked. Several character deaths were altered (and felt much less powerful), one arc involving Rygart's brother was cut which resulted in a bit of an odd ending and in the end the mood was just different from the manga. Both of them start in the same place but the manga has been steadily getting more and more subdued and depressing, many of the characters have been at least a bit broken by this point, but the story here doesn't change from the slightly happier feeling the story started with. In a sense, the characters just don't grow as much here than they did in the manga and having people grow and change is a major point of any story. 

The Audio: These OVAs are a bit strange since they have an actual opening sequence that is played every time like a tv series does and it was that opening song that convinced me to try out the OVAs. It's a beautiful song and while it might seem odd to have a ballad as the opening to a mecha series the lyrics really work, singing about fate and destiny which is a theme the series has touched on a few times. I didn't find any of the other music in the series quite as nice but since that song (Fate by KOKIA) is one of my favorites of the year that's understandable.

The Visuals: Break Blade is an interesting collaboration between Production IG (who is one of the bigger anime companies right now with a lot of well produced and good looking shows, Bunny Drop, Eden of the East and the Blood franchise ) and Xebec, a lower tier studio that has done some okay work and some bad work (some of their better titles are Pandora Hearts, Legend of the Legendary Heroes and The Third: The Girl With The Blue Eye). The result of this collaboration is that the work looks much better than a regular Xebec production and rather like a regular Production IG work. All of the fight scenes are very well animated throughout the series and everything else looks consistently good. One small advantage this series has over the manga is that, with everything in color, it's a lot easier to keep the armies/soldiers separate, something I had trouble with in the manga. The mechs and uniforms for both sides are drawn rather distinctly but the cast was simply so large that I couldn't automatically remember who was on which side and giving both sides very different colors really helped in that regard. 

In the end, it's hardly a bad OVA series, it certainly looks gorgeous, but by the end it had diverged too much from the manga that I just don't see myself buying this in the future. The manga I would buy except again, it's OOP and I am going to collect all that was released in the US at some point, I don't suppose some other English speaking licensor is putting it out? 

And again, apologies that this is up so late, as you guys can tell I'm still getting used to my new schedule and it's just different enough each week to make the transition a bit more difficult. Maybe I'll get the hang of this before I take a break in November, I certainly hope so!  

OVA Review: .hack//quantum

When I first saw reviews of this OVA series I passed them by since I’ve never seen any of the other .hack series (been interested in them for years but there are so many installments over multiple forms of media that I’m confused about which series I need to see/are good versus some, if any, I need to avoid). But a livestream I sometimes frequent was showing the first episode one night and I found that it didn’t matter that I hadn’t seen the previous series or wasn’t really a gamer, it was fun and I made sure to snap up the other two episodes when they came out.

.hack//quantum

Summary: The latest story in the .hack universe, Asumi loves to play The World with her two friends, Iori and Eri, where they spend a lot of time just playing for fun. But after one night when Asumi accidentally triggers some traps on other players who are fighting a boss she finds herself on the run from other players who want to capture her and the bounty on her head. During the chase she runs into another player, Hermit (the cat) and the two of them end up in a strange part of The World where PK'd players don't revive but instead fall into mysterious comas that the authorities seem to be trying to cover up.

The Good: This series is very accessible to people who aren’t unfamiliar with the franchise or even big gamers. The World is presented as a simple MMORPG so the anime doesn’t have to spend much time explaining the situation (it does a lot of show don’t tell, like it shows that the characters are using headsets instead of having the characters awkwardly work in exposition) and simply lets the characters take it away. The story fits neatly within three episodes and can either serve as a nice prologue to a full length tv series (which, judging from the sequel hook this seems to be the hope) or stand on it’s own.

The Bad: In the end the villain is an unsatisfying one (never mind hints that there might be an even greater big bad lurking out there) and the fact that Asumi didn't know who it was when everyone else seemed to was very frustrating. The story also has a sequel hook which, if it goes unrealized will also make the ending frustrating, this felt like a chapter in a story being completed, not the entire story.

The Art: The art looks great throughout so no problems here. If The World looks a bit more colorful than the real world and if there are a few conspicuous CGI shots as well it's easy to reason that, since The World is a video game, this actually makes perfect sense.

The Music: The OVAs don't have an opening song (each episode goes straight from the title screen to the action) but it does have a j-pop ballad for the closer, "shizuku." Not the most memorable ballad but it does it's job and certainly doesn't sound like a mismatch for the show.

After watching this I really want to watch more .hack shows so I have to ask, does anyone know of a good series of reviews that could give me some background information? It seems like the first series is just old enough that a lot of anime review blogs don't cover it, plus Netflix doesn't have the DVDs (since this got a US release by Bandia it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that it's not legally streaming anywhere, gah) so any help someone could give me would be much appreciated!