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Sep 25, 2017
By some twist of fate you have stumbled across this old and obscure anime called Dragon Fist that less than 300 people scored on MAL. You are now perhaps wondering if you should watch this OVA or not. Do not worry; I'm here to save your time by telling you not to watch it. Seriously don't, unless you really want to see a truly bad anime. I have watched a lot of anime before this and Dragon Fist is still one of the worst I have seen. Let me explain why.
First off I should clarify that Dragon Fist is an OVA, which is important
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because OVA's generally imply higher budget and higher budget implies better animation/art than a regular anime series, but unfortunately that is not the case with Dragon Fist. This anime simply looks inferior, it does not even have a 90’s series level of quality, much less of a 90’s OVA level of quality. Dragon Fist noticeably uses a lot of budget saving measures such as still frames and only showing the backs of the characters when they are talking. The latter half of the OVA also has lots of fuck ups, especially in the facial department; you will know what I'm talking about if you watch it. The Artstyle of the anime itself is pretty much generic 90's shounen art, think Yu Yu Hakusho and the like. If you want to watch some neat 90’s high quality OVA action anime, then you are in the wrong place.
Second important thing that I must mention is the fact this anime is an adaptation of a manga by the same name, and while I have not read the original manga (it isn't even translated) it really shows that it is an adaptation. Why you ask? Because the story does not make sense, the characters do not make sense, and because the plot is all over the place and is extremely rushed in terms of pacing. I could easily see a less experienced anime watcher being confused by what is going on in this anime, so I will briefly summarize the story to help those confused viewers.
The Synopsis of this anime is deceptive since it talks about dragons and the protagonist being a kind of half dragon half human, so viewers would naturally think this is a fantasy anime, right? They would be wrong, because this OVA is actually about cloning and has nothing to do with dragons and fantasy, other than the protagonist being one. So the basic setup is already a mess given that it is some weird mix of fantasy and SCI-FI without any natural cohesion, but it gets only worse. We have 4 named characters in this anime, they are as follows: Fei-Long Ling - The Dragon Boy, Katano Fuyuka - Female lead and Clone, Kaga Naoki - Another Clone, and finally Sugiura - the Villain. All of them are students at the same school; Naoki and Sugiura are the masterminds behind the cloning. And that is really all there is to their characters.
We start with some expositional narrating about the Dragon Clan that lasts for a few minutes, there is really no point to it given the fact that the anime does not deal with the dragons at all, so it counts as wasted screen time in my book. After that we are immediately thrown into a Japanese high-school (because of course), where our Chinese dragon protagonist is being bullied by his Japanese classmates. Why is he being bullied? Who knows. It never comes up again in the OVA, so it is simply inserted there to evoke some kind of pity for the protagonist, but it fails to even do that because it comes out of nowhere and ends abruptly, like every other plot point in this anime.
After the bullying scene we are greeted with a rooftop scene where our dragon protagonist decided to angst and be a loner, coincidentally this causes him to witness 3 nameless goons trying to kidnap Katano Fuyuka, the clone girl. He being the hero of the story obviously threatens the goons to stop, who despite outnumbering Ling; decide to leave with a classic "I'll not forget this." This event obviously causes our male protagonist and our female lead to be introduced to each other. Fuyuka immediately reveals to Ling that she is a clone and that she escaped from a facility (and for some reason escaped into a school), Ling does not really react or give a fuck about this revelation, he just takes it naturally, because this is the character quality in this anime. Anyway Ling promises to Fuyuka that he will protect her no matter what, despite only knowing her for about 5 minutes.
Hilariously 1 second after making that proclamation, Ling leaves Fuyuka alone, who is immediately ambushed by Naoki first and then by the 3 same goons from before. This was so hilarious that I couldn't help but laugh. This anime kind of functions as an unintentional comedy given how terribly constructed it is. Anyway the 3 goons kidnap Fuyuka and bring her back to the cloning facility; Ling who was doing god knows what notices the absence of Fuyuka and heads after her. This is where I'll stop summarizing the story and start talking about the important matters.
This is easily one of the most rushed anime I have seen, it goes through what seems to be like a few episodes worth of anime material in the span of 40 minutes, which goes horribly with the fact that the anime tries to be very melodramatic in its drama. For example Fuyuka goes from wanting to live to wanting to die in 5 minutes then wanting to live again in another 5 minutes, because reasons. The characters also pretend to have known each other for a longer period of time, despite having only met each other for a day. Fuyuka for example admires Ling and has feelings for him despite only meeting him that day and speaking with him for less than 5 minutes. Naoki and Sugiura also know of Ling despite never meeting him before, because properly introducing the villains to the protagonist is for good anime only. Dragon Fist is also full of "dramatic revelations" that come out of nowhere, except they don't have any dramatic effects because of how incredibly rushed everything is.
Ling despite being a powerful dragon is somehow able to be pushed around and almost beaten by the 3 nameless human goons, until of course he decides to transform in traditional shounen fashion into his dragon form and beat everyone. Naoki only exists as a plot device character who can stall for time by sacrificing his own life, so that Ling can rescue Fuyuka from the villain, which also makes little sense seeing Ling in his dragon form was super fast yet it still took him minutes to catch up to Fuyuka and Sugiura.
While we are on the note of Sugiura, let's talk about him and his motivations as a villain. Like everything else in this OVA, he too makes zero sense. It is revealed that the reason Sugiura conducted the cloning experiment was so he could clone his mother who was suffering from heart problems. Both Naoki and Fuyuka were successful clones albeit with defects, Fuyuka escapes the facility and he wastes time trying to recapture her, even though he has no reason to do so. Once he has captured her, Sugiura tortures Fuyuka by revealing the fact that her lifespan is limited, even though he has no reason to torture her. Then when Ling rescues Fuyuka, Sugiura heads after them in order to kill Fuyuka, even though he has no reason to do so, because Fuyuka will die in a couple more minutes even if he doesn't do anything. As a whole the villain makes zero sense, he just wants to kill the other 3 characters because he is retarded.
The music for Dragon Fist was made by Kenji Kawai, who is one of my favourite Japanese composers, his instrumental performance in Dragon Fist is pretty solid and arguably the only decent aspect of the anime, but I must unfortunately mention the fact that is only true for the instrumental music in this anime. Dragon Fist plays 2 really awkward vocal songs during its run time and they simply feel awkward because they do not fit into their respective scenes and come out of nowhere, further ruining the already messed up tone of the anime.
Who would I recommend this OVA to? Nobody.
As I said the only reason to watch this mess is if you want to see some truly bad anime or if you want to treat it as an unintentional comedy.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Aug 27, 2017
Mod Edit: This review was originally posted for Ito Junji no Bishoujo Zankoku Douwa: Shirayukihime-hen (87384) and has subsequently been merged into Horror Anthology Comic Shikaku (132675).
This manga is essentially Junji Ito's take on the classic story of Snow White.
It is an extremely short story, as the whole thing is no longer than 15 pages, so there is very little to talk or enjoy about this manga.
The story is about a vain Queen who prides herself as being the most beautiful in all the world, she checks and confirms this fact each and every day by asking her magical mirror, until one day the
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mirror says that she is only the second most beautiful in the world, as she was surpassed by her foster-daughter, Snow White. Upon hearing this the Queen does the only logical thing, she throws Snow White into the dungeon and has her killed. This way she would be the most beautiful again, if it weren't for the fact that Snow White keeps resurrecting via the powers of the 7 dwarves (who are for some reason ghosts in this story). Snow White thus keeps getting resurrected and killed until the story suddenly ends with the Queen's death.
The art is decent, as it should be expected of a Junji Ito manga, but there really isn't anything to enjoy about this manga, it is neither scary nor interesting, and by the time something interesting happens, it just ends and you won't even care about any of the characters. You will most likely forget this one soon after reading it.
A poor work all things considered. If you want to read a good Junji Ito adaptation of a classic story, then I would recommend reading his adaptation of Frankenstein, it is way longer and more fleshed out than this one.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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May 10, 2017
Kagewani Shou is one of those typical sequels that tried doing something different and new, but in that process it lost sight of what was actually good about the original and became bad as a result of this. If you liked the original Kagewani, then you will most likely not enjoy Kagewani Shou, because it went on a completely different route than its predecessor.
The original Kagewani was a collection of short horror stories that were only loosely tied together by the central recurring characters of Banba and Kimura. In comparison to this Kagewani Shou tried to have a story, a controlled narrative and a
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basic plot, which directly follows the ending of the original anime. This wouldn't be a problem by itself, but the sad fact is that the story that the writers of this anime came up is bland, generic and full of predictable clichés that you will see coming from a mile away if you are experienced in the genre. Worst of all, Kagewani Shou is more of a supernatural thriller than a horror anime, which is all the more reason you will not like it, if you were a fan of the first one.
The fact that the original Kagewani didn't have much of a central story was something that actually worked greatly to its advantage in combination with the 8 minute episode limit in creating a mysterious and creepy atmosphere. Unfortunately Kagewani Shou is neither creepy nor mysterious. The reason it is not mysterious is because it tried too hard to be scientific and explain its monsters (even though it was not necessary), and like all dark monsters that are brought into the daylight, they too have lost their aura of mystery, because the audience was given too much information about them. And the reason the anime is not creepy (aside 1-2 episodes) is because most of the episodes are centered on characters who have supernatural powers (read: not normal, vulnerable humans) and as a result of this, the creepiness factor is completely lost because the characters can effortlessly fight back and destroy the monsters. In short, there is no real tension in this anime, which would be essential.
In regards to the characters, this anime introduces two new recurring characters. One of them is an evil corporate executive whose sole purpose is to make Kimura (who already belongs to the same character archetype) look less evil by being even more evil than him. The other one is a ninja girl who might as well have come out of Naruto, because she behaves like a typical shounen character and can effortlessly eliminate all the supernatural creatures with just a swing of her katana. Neither of these two characters brought anything positive to the story, in fact they only brought it down with their presence. Aside from this, the relationship of the characters is also quite juvenile and makes little sense, for example Banba trusts and allies with Kimura for most of this season despite his betrayal at the end of season 1, while Ninja girl tries to kill Banba for no valid reason, then the next time they meet they are allies all of a sudden.
The only things I can praise about this anime are its music and art. The music is very good at hyping up the shitty episodes and it is also similar to the soundtrack of the previous season. This season fortunately kept the unique aesthetics of the original anime (which is quite good looking), and on top of that, the animation itself improved a lot compared to the previous season.
Overall this was a sequel that shouldn't even have been made, as it is worse than the original in all the important aspects. They didn't need to create anything new, they should have just done the same as season 1, but better and with more improvements. I wouldn't recommend this anime to anyone who liked the first Kagewani as a horror at all, instead I would recommend it to people who enjoy fast trainwrecks, because that is what Kagewani Shou is. The anime also ends on a cliff-hanger that is clearly setting up for a third season, but I'm genuinely hoping that their sales will trash and the studio abandons future Kagewani projects.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Dec 14, 2016
Junk: Record of the Last Hero is one of those generic manga that start with a worthless protagonist who suddenly receives an awesome power that allows him to do whatever he wants. There are hundreds of manga that start with the same premise and do it much better than Junk does, so I would recommend reading those instead because Junk is nothing but a massive waste of your time.
The story begins with an internet lottery that only the first two applicants can win, (unsurprisingly) our ironically named protagonist Hiro, is one of the winners of this lottery. The following day he receives a delivery,
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which contains the JUNK system that allows him to transform himself into a superhero for the time limit of an hour. Instead of using his new found powers for good, our protagonist simply beats up his bullies and generally anyone that he does not like or gets in his way. After this Hiro proceeds to kill his own parents by jumping on his home with the full force of the Junk suit, but this does not seem to bother him much, considering that the inheritance he receives afterwards allows him to live comfortably without working. (All of this happens in the first two chapters, so I didn't spoil anything)
After having killed his parents, Hiro is confronted by the owner of the white Junk Suit, a woman, who proceeds to ask him if he wants to be a god or a devil, meaning if he will use his power for good or for evil. Despite not giving a clear answer to the white Junk, in a few chapters it becomes clear that Hiro is just a selfish Devil who does whatever he wants and cares not for the consequences, while the owner of the White Junk Suit, Lisa is a person who helps those in need and protects the innocent, a hero of justice if you mind calling her that.
You would not be mistaken for thinking that this manga is about the rivalry and conflicts of these two characters with clearly opposing personalities and goals, as this is the impression that the manga builds and gives you in the first few chapters. But in actuality, this is something that is quickly put to the sidelines and becomes irrelevant, and this is where the flaws of Junk start to show. Despite having such a simple story, the mangaka is too incompetent to do anything with it; he does not even know what to do with it, which is evident from the fact that not even the characters themselves know what they want to do, Hiro himself is either laying on hiss ass being a NEET or he is using the Junk Suit for pathetic things like bullying 13 year old kids because they said mean things about him on the internet. (Yes, this is the maturity level of this manga.)
There is no clear indication that the manga is going anywhere at all, the characters do not do anything to influence the story, they simply react to the various random events that spring up, which is not what you would be expecting from people with powerful superhuman suits at their disposal. The main cast is extremely passive, which makes this manga an utterly boring read. The various random events that I mentioned range from kidnapping, terrorism and newspaper scandals, none of which really have anything to do with a greater whole, they are just there for the characters to finally do something, because they never do anything on their own as they lack concrete goals and objectives.
This was already quite bad, but the sad reality is that the manga only gets worse after it gets into its second half. It starts breaking its own rules by introducing first a third Junk Suit, then later an entire battalion of them, which make the original ones moot and irrelevant. Likewise the time limit of 1 hour is extended to 8 hours, the element of having to hide their identities as the Supermen becomes redundant due to this, which actually played an important role in the beginning as Hiro was constantly getting tailed by a policeman, who wanted to bust his identity as the Black Junk Suit owner.
Towards the latter parts of the manga the established characters shift from being reactors to mere spectators, meaning that they no longer even react to the events happening around them, only watch and comment on them. Hiro stops using the suit and becomes a high school student who does absolutely nothing, other than fucking around with his harem, the cop with a personal vendetta against the Black Junk simply ceases investigation simply because he was told to, the women in Hiro's life are conveniently moved to another town so they would not interfere with the plot, and Lisa willingly gives up her white junk suit and sinks into obscurity like every other character. The worst part is that these actions are in contradiction with their previously established character, but the author clearly did not care about that.
The above happens as a result of the author quickly trying to push a plot into the end of the manga, which is some bullshit involving terrorism, conspiracies, Sakatomo Ryouma, a religious sect with infinite money, revolutions and the Japanese Democratic League. It is as stupid as it sounds and this was the final straw for me when I dropped this crap at chapter 30. Overall the story is simply atrocious and is what you would expect from a person who tried writing a story for the first time in his life and utterly failed, except the author, Kia Asamiya, has written more enough manga prior to Junk, so his incompetence is inexcusable.
The only thing that is worse than the story of this manga, are its characters. I already mentioned how all of them are passive and that they lack any goals that would drive them forward. What I didn't talk about was the fact that the characters in Junk can be divided into two categories, Hiro and stock characters. I'm saying this because even though Hiro is a shit character, he is still the only one who receives any form of characterization, everyone else might as well be some generic filler manga character taken right out from a stock database. I'm serious; you can pretty much describe almost every character as generic childhood friend, generic cheerful schoolgirl, generic vendetta cop, generic murdering psychopath, generic wannabe hero, generic Lolita girl who is totally 18 years old, etc. The point is, none of them have anything unique to them, and for all intents and purposes they are nothing more than shallow stock characters.
There are also too many characters for a 35 chapter manga, and many of them are unnecessary and could be removed from the story with ease; I felt that some characters were only added so that they would needlessly prolong the story as filler characters (Red Junk Suit in particular). Its very hard to get attached or care about any of them because of their sociopathic nature, worthlessness or the simple fact that they are barely given screen time or because they fade into irrelevance as the manga progresses.
One of the big "plots” of this manga, if you want to call it a plot, is the fact that Hiro's character pretty much changes from mid half. In the beginning he was an angst filled man-child with anger issues who lashed out on everyone who looked at him the wrong way, but when he stops using his Junk Suit and goes back to school, he is suddenly apathetic and emotionless as if he was a rock, he does nothing but observe. I guess this was meant as some kind of pathetic attempt to make the reader care about Hiro or redeem him in the eyes of the reader, since he was pretty much unlikable before, if it was, then it certainly failed, especially due to the fact that it happens from one chapter to another without any proper development or build up, he essentially just switches personality at the author’s whim, instead of naturally evolving.
I wish I could stop here with the bad points, but unfortunately Junk is also a failure in the art department, so I have to comment on that as well. I don't want to be rude, but the author of this manga is very lazy, I'm saying this simply due to the fact that many times during the manga he does not even draw in the facial features of the characters, which is odd considering most of the manga is told in dialogues and monologues, focusing closely in on the characters. If somebody reads this manga and pays attention, then they will be able to notice how sometimes the mangaka will only draw a single eye on a character and no other features whatsoever, which just looks very bad.
Laziness aside, the manga also has same-face issues, meaning that the facial features of a character are exactly the same as another, the most obvious example being Hiro and Ryouko, whose faces pretty much look exactly the same. The scenes and backgrounds are also lacking in detail and quite simplistic, but they get the job done, so there is no point in bashing on them, but what I cannot forgive are the action scenes. For a supposedly action oriented manga, the action scenes and the way they are drawn are utter crap, and its one of the reasons why I was bored while reading it aside the inaction of the characters. To put it simply, it fails to make the fights exciting, and many times you will have a hard time telling what is even going on during a fight, due to the incompetent drawing of the mangaka.
There is really nothing I can bring to Junk’s defense, other than the fact that there are manga out there that are even more horrible than Junk, so it still doesn't deserve a score lower than 3 at worst, and if I'm generous I could also rank it a 4 at best.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Nov 2, 2016
I just finished reading Baptism and saw that there was no review for it, so I decided to write one myself.
Baptism, or Senrei (in the Japanese name) was created by Umezu Kazou, the famous and old horror mangaka who inspired many other horror mangaka like Junji Ito, but I have never read any manga from Umezu Kazou before, so I went in without any expectations. I'm saying this, because despite the promising first few chapters, Baptism was overall a letdown, primarily because it was ruined by the sudden "plot twists" that came in the last volume, up until then it was fine or even
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decent. I'm not going to go into any spoilers, but if you, like myself, hate the whole "it was all in your head" or "you were just imagining it the whole time", then it is pretty likely that you will not like Baptism.
Now Baptism is a "horror" manga, the reason I put horror into quotation marks, is because there is nothing really scary about this manga, if you are looking a frightening or chilling read, then Baptism won't give you that kind of experience. Instead of being scary, Baptism is more gross and unsettling, there is a lot of messed up stuff going in it that might make you uncomfortable, but not scared. The basic gist of the story is that there was a beautiful actress who was so scared of losing her beauty and growing old to the point that she had gone insane, this mad woman wanted a way to stop herself from going ugly like everyone else, so she has given birth to a young daughter, Sakura, who grew up without knowing that she would be the sacrifice for her mother's everlasting beauty and youth......
Theme-wise the basic story is about human greed and selfishness, how much a person would be willing to trample others just for the sake of her own happiness, but in the last volume this theme suddenly changes to the dangers of beliefs and imagination, which was a pretty bullshit turn of events, mainly because it did not fit the narrative of the earlier volumes. In fact, due to the revelation made in the last volume, the story outright becomes contradictory and paradoxical, since earlier events do not line up with the later plot twist, however I am unable to talk about these without spoiling the manga, so I shall leave it be.
The second biggest weak point of the manga are its characters, there is not much to say regarding them, there are only 2-3 important characters and a few side characters, all of them are equally simple and shallow. The story is told from the viewpoint of the protagonist, who is also the villain of the story, which is also the primary reason why the manga is not scary, you know everything that is going to happen and everything that the villain is going to do, since the story is told from her viewpoint there isn't really much of a suspense or mystery.
The protagonist is highly one dimensional in her selfishness, she doesn't really care about anyone else, thus its very hard to like her or empathize with her, but then again you are not supposed to root for the villain.
The other characters are not any better, its hard to care for any of them due to the fact that they suffer from chronic stupidity, as it is typical from horror characters. Indeed, had the side characters possess any semblance of intelligence, the villain could have been apprehended much earlier, but instead of that, the characters regularly made stupid decisions that real people wouldn't make, which is what prolonged their suffering. I would even call certain characters unrealistic, like the X year old little girl who was willing to help the villain commit murders due to some retarded loyalty that no real person, especially not an X year old little girl would possess. And then there is also the other X year old schoolgirl who decided to play detective (because none of the adults would do it) and almost ends up getting killed because of it. Speaking of adults, they are useless for the most part and don't really act like adults would do, which really bothered me during the manga.
The few good things I can say about this manga have to do with art and enjoyment. First off, the art looks really good, so good that upon looking at it, you wouldn't even be able to tell that it was made in 1974, of course it might still fall short to the art of modern manga, but considering the time it was made and comparing it to its contemporary manga, it looks very well made. While the manga itself as I said wasn't particularly scary, the few chilling moments it had, was primarily thanks to the skilled artwork. Other than this, the manga is relatively short and since the pacing is also fast, it can be finished it in an hour if not less, and despite its shortcomings, the story is at the very least interesting enough that you will want to see how the manga will end.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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