Ranked #4919

Sprite: Between Two Worlds

This is a review of the DVD version of "Sprite: Between Two Worlds" released by U.S. Manga Corps in 2001. It was viewed with English voice overs and English sub-titles.

"Sprite: Between Two Worlds" mainly falls into the category of romance anime with a significant number of ecchi scenes along the way, and also incorporates elements of comedy and drama with some psychological undertones.

Parental Warning:
This is not for children. While there is nothing explicit shown in "Sprite", it contains multiple sex scenes, or implied ones. There is also a significant amount of nudity, though no genitalia is shown. Oddly, the age on the box indicated 16 and up, but the warnings included with the video state it is for 18 and up.

Story: 4/10
The main tale focuses on Toru and his interactions with Manami and Nami who are actually two different personalities of the same girl. While not expanded upon, it also turns out that Toru and Manami/Nami are apparently related, likely making them at least distant cousins if not more closely related. The mother of Manami/Nami appears in a few scenes, but doesn't play much of a role. Some of their classmates appear in multiple scenes, often serving roles as rivals or alternate interests of affection. However, the bulk of the scenes involve Toru and Manami/Nami and how they deal with the split personality issue.

The fundamental difference is that one personality is timid and shy and the other is confident and out-going. However, this confidence and resulting out-going attitude that Nami possesses has could also be viewed as a simple maturity aspect of Manami. In other words, Nami could just represent an older, more mature version of Manami. A story with Toru witnessing and perhaps even facilitating this gradual shift between a once-timid girl to the eventual confident version may have been an interesting coming-of-age tale.

The split personality condition could have also been covered in a number of ways such as a full-blown comedy focusing on the humorous situations it leads to for Manami/Nami. Or it could have been a full-blown drama that explored the tension that builds between Toru and Manami/Nami. Or it could be an ecchi romance that turns a simple boy-girl relationship into some sort of psycho-sexual menage-a-trois. At times, "Sprite" seems to be attempting to be any one of these, yet it never manages to fully deliver on any of them.

Characters: 3/10
Toru is your typical horny adolescent boy. He seems rather stereotyped and there is not much character development for him. Manami/Nami is the most interesting character in the show and she is the only one that really undergoes any notable character development. The mother has little depth, and the fact she seems completely unconcerned or completely oblivious to the romantic relationship between Toru and Manami seems unrealistic for a parent. Meanwhile, all of the fellow high school students seem to be two-dimensional.

Art / Animation: 5/10
This seems roughly on par for a 1997 OVA. There's nothing all that good or bad about the quality of the animation or character models. The character physiques seem more realistic than those found in some other anime, but their faces look a bit outdated by today's standards.

Sound / Voice: 4/10
The sound is average. There's nothing all that memorable about the soundtrack or background that stands out.

The english voice actor for Toru was poor, but the voice actresses for Manami/Nami and her mother were acceptable. The other students were ok.

As this disk offered the chance to both listen to English and see English subtitles simultaneously, I found it interesting that the two often differ. Typically, it was only a couple words change, but sometimes and entire phrase was omitted or changed.

Enjoyment: 4/10
There are a few memorable scenes in the show, but they are few and far between. From a comedic standpoint, some of the humor is rather juvenile, though I chuckled at a couple of the "nosebleed" moments which involved Nami sans panties. From a dramatic stand-point, the situations and emotions the characters felt never seemed strong enough to pull me in. From a romance standpoint, it never seemed heartfelt. Some of the nudity and sex scenes seemed overly gratuitous, and likely could have been left out entirely.

Final Verdict: 4/10
"Sprite: Between Two Worlds" had the opportunity to explore the issue of split personality in a number of ways. Had it focused on a single approach, such as just drama or comedy, it may have achieved a much stronger delivery. Instead, the anime seems to suffer from its own multiple personality syndrome, never quite sure if it's a comedy, drama, romance, or something else. Unfortunately, the end result is less than the sum of its schizophrenic parts, and the final work misses the mark, never reaching its full potential. read more