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May 6, 2024
This movie might have had a good base idea, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
The story is your generic technology-vs-nature one, with nature supposedly being the "good" side, but to be honest the story doesn't make me want to root for either of them: plants are an active threat, attacking people out of nowhere and turning into trees those who want their power but exceed in using it, and there are some Druids who apparently worship nature and control the water distribution. I say apparently because we know absolutely nothing about them, they're just there. On the other hand, the only "technologies"
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shown are a massive-health-hazard factory, firearms and a volcano that was somehow turned into an armed fortress that can move... but is also capable of eructing like it was still connected to the underground magma flow. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.
The main characters don't help much the story either, they're bland and with no real motivation beside fulfilling their roles: the male lead is an insufferably stubborn brat who puts his own ideals above everyone else's without even bothering to listen to them; the female lead is a bit more relatable because if after waking ap in a post-apocalypctic future I was told "we need your help to turn things back to what they were" I'd too accept immediately but that's all her utility to the plot; the villain... had potential, with him not only being from the past but also connected to the incident that left Earth in this state, but it was all thrown in the toilet. As for the side characters, they're basically useless, some of them could be removed and the story wouldn't change at all.
That said, it's not like everything's thrash. For one, graphics are good, it's CGI pretending to be 2D and it does a better work at it than some more recent productions. Sound is ok too, the background music does its job and I personally liked a lot the opening/insert song, the ending song a little less but that's because of my personal taste. Voice acting... is fine, I don't know if it's the script's fault for being so bland or what but even the (very few) scenes that are supposed to be emotive lack intensity.
In conclusion, this should've been a 12 episode series just so they could at least explain some points (the Druids and the villain's backstory after his awakening, just to say two) and actually make us feel something for these characters.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Apr 22, 2024
To really enjoy this short anime (only 25 minutes) one must have a good knowledge of Japanese history, more specifically of the Bakumatsu era (1860s), otherwise it's a complete mess.
The story spans between 1863 and 1868, something we know because the first and last scene are the same and there's an indication that the story begins five years prior, but if not for that the story could all as well happen in the span of a few months or weeks because the characters don't show any visible differences (i.e. hair growing, different clothes). There's also no real explanation of what's going on, you're supposed to
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already know who Ryouma Sakamoto was, what he did and the whole historical background for the story to make any sense, there's no outside narration and the dialogues give only a few hints that are hard (if not impossible) to put together with no prior knowledge.
Characterwise it doesn't get much better, Ryo does have some growth in that he goes from being shy to become more outgoing as he stays with Ryouma but even that is poorly handeled, I guess it's a way to show some time has passed but it still does come a little out of the blue. The other characters are almost all really existing people so they have to be there but otherwise they're as hollow as they can be, with (again) no proper explanation behind their actions.
The animation is without doubt the best thing this short has to offer, the action scenes are fluid and easy to follow, while the character design isn't anything remarkable and the background characters tend to look very similar; the background music too isn't anything special, while the ending sung by Hitomi (the one that made all the songs in Code Geass) is nice but doesn't fit much with the tone of the story.
In short, had this story been developed in a full 12/13 episode series it could have been a good addition to the many anime that feature the Bakumatsu era, since (to my knowledge) most focus on the Shinsengumi or only use the historical period as a background and as such it would have been a good chance to see the other side of the story, but by trying to cram too many things in such a short time it actually backfires and leaves the watcher with more questions than answers, one above all: how does the clash between Ryo and Hijikata go? Little spoiler: Hijikata dies in 1869.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Mar 17, 2024
I can sum this series up in two words: chaotic and disappointing. Not the worst watch ever, visuals and voice acting are ok, but the plot is unnecessarily complex, some parts feel a bit forced and the final is both predictable and anticlimactic. Oh, it should be noted it has no opening or ending song, there's only an instrumental track during the ending credits, and the episode length variates between 23 and 30 minutes (not including the ending credits).
This story has three main actors: the protagonist Shizuma, the deuteragonist Kyoushirou and the villain Buhei; all of them have their objectives, and they end up colluding
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while pursuing said objectives. Even with the many (too many) minor characters it should be an easy enough to follow story, shouldn't it? But wait, there's also the Japanese government involved with its own agenda! And the yakuza are called into the fray too! And if that wasn't enough, somehow even the Brithsh ambassador gets a part to play, albeit minor... I'm not saying the main actors fall into the background, but there's really too many things going on at the same time and it might take some serious concentration not to get lost as the plot unfolds.
Let's go a little more into the details.
We have Shizuma, an ex-samurai who joins the police force to increase his chances of finding the fiancée he lost contact with during the Boshin War (January-May 1868); when he and his buddy get into a fight with some military guys they are helped by Kyoushirou, who was sent by a yakuza clan to settle a dispute between them and the military. But Kyoushirou isn't yakuza, he only joined the clan because they have a connection with the target of his revenge, Buhei, who killed his father six years prior the beginning of the story. Buhei, on his part, wants to stage a coup and bring back the "samurai era", and to do that he joined hands with the yakuza (to gain manpower) and some former samurai lords while at the same time planning assassinations of government's exponents. At the same time, the government is tight on funds and when they hear that Kyoushirou's group has access to a place called El Dorado, where they suppose there's a lot of gold, they set their sights on them. To top this free-for-all off, the British ambassador has a girl spying around just because it's always a good thing to know what's going on, she helps unravel some mysteries but it's not really fundamental for the plot to advance.
Do you think it's too much? This is just the premise.
Buhei's minions try to do away with Kyoushirou, and even Shizuma is out for his blood after his buddy, who was tailing Kyoushirou because he's a suspect in a murder case, gets killed; at the same time, Kyoushirou stirs up trouble between two yakuza clans who work under Buhei to get a chance to getting close to him and kill him, but ultimately fails and has to run away from the yakuza too. After saving the Prime Minister from an assassination attempt Shizuma finds out that his long lost fiancée, Sumie, is now working under Buhei to get her revenge on the Meiji government because of what they did during the Boshin War, and since he doesn't want to kill her he decides to leave the police force... only to come back almost immediately after finding the real culprit for his buddy's death, a minion of Buhei that had infiltrated the police forces.
Now Buhei's plan is at its final stage and almost ready to be put in action: they'll use hot-air balloons to drop some bombs over the imperial palace and kidnap the emperor during the confusion, then stir up a rebellion of former samurais and overthrow the current government using the emperor to justify the legitimacy of their claims; the government gets wind of this (IMHO pretty stupid) plan and sets off to thwart it, partially failing because of Kyoushirou's group's intervention but things still turn out for the best, with Shizuma managing to convince Buhei's major ally to let bygones be bygones and thus neutralizing the risk of a samurai rebellion.
In the meantime, Kyoushirou has set sail for the ship where Buhei's hiding to kill him once for all and finally take his revenge, but in the end he spares him, only cutting his hair to "kill his pride"; all that's left then is Shizuma and Kyoushirou's final confrontation, but even that doesn't get a proper closure since Buhei, who's completely lost all of his marbles, shots him in the back before (most likely) dying in the fire that started during a previous fight on the ship.
So in the end the government is still penniless, because the El Dorado was just a farm in Hokkaido where people who didn't fit in the new Meiji society took refuge, and at risk of a samurai uprising (that historically will happen three years later and will be known as the Satsuma Rebellion or Seinan War), Buhei's presumably dead, Kyoushirou's 100% dead, Sumie's dead too (she took a bullet destined to Shizuma and in any case was terminally ill) and the last scene is Shizuma scattering someone's ashes in the air while on a hill that overlooks the El Dorado farm.
As I said at the beginning, it's not the worst executed anime I've ever seen or the one with the most confusing plot, I was actually quite invested in it until the last two episodes started to rush things; the characters too are so-so, some are identified only by their hairstyle or clothing color and this makes it hard to recognize them (i.e. Sumie and another girl she's close with could be the same person if not for their kimonos) and with such a big cast of recurring characters some of them are just there with no real explanation on who they are and why they act like so, not even hinted at, like the girl who spies for the British ambassador or the guy who works undercover for the government and is based on a really existing person.
I would certainly not recommend this anime for a casual watch because it does take some concentration to keep up with the many plots and hints dropped here and there, but I'm not completely flunking it either because it has some good ideas that maybe, given more episodes (or less subplots), could have been executed better.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jan 15, 2024
Let's start with the good things: animation and graphics are nice, it's a 2005 anime so it won't look as pretty and clean as modern ones but it's still pleasant to the eyes (or maybe that's just my old school preference bias), if I had to find a down side is that sometimes the bishounen aesthethic is taken to such extremes one might find hart to believe some characters are male; I especially enjoyed the fight scenes, the dogfights in particular, for a story dealing with superhuman soldiers (that don't even appear that much) it keeps things within the realms of reality as much as
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possible. Voice acting too is fine, I watched in Japanese so I don't know about other languages but there was nothing irritating, at least not to my ears (or maybe I'm just too used to Japanese dub). The plot too is good, it's a bit hard to understand what's going on at first (mainly due to the events being all over the place) but in the end it all makes sense.
Moving on to so-and-so territory, the music. Background music is just there, there's no particolar track that struck me and some even reminded me of the soundtracks for other anime; same goes for opening and ending songs, maybe they're just not my genre but I skipped them every time. The characters too fall in this cathegory: the protagonists are fine, one of them was a bit irritating at the beginning but they explain why he's like that so that's fine by me, and there's also some character developement which I always appreciate; I can't say the same about the villain(s) though: they're annoying from start to end, their motivations are boring and there's nothing in their characters that made them even a bit likeable to me.
But the worst thing of all, sadly, is the pacing. The first half is outright confusing, the focus skips from one main character to the other with no apparent logic, and it's not until around episode 15 (out of 25, so more than over halfway) that they start properly explaining things, there's something here and there but it's more questions than answers; thankfully the second part is better, albeit maybe a bit rushed at some points, but it takes some serious willpower to not throw in the towel after the first couple of episodes... especially considering there're 2 (TWO) recaps in just the first 10 (TEN) episodes, and even throughout the series there's continuous (and long) flashbacks of pretty much the same scenes. I'm not going to lie, it's really annoying.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Oct 9, 2021
I never played the original game so I had no idea of what I was going to see, not that I expected much from it being a 2 episode OVA but... to use an euphorism, it's rather confusing.
The main character's (Burn) goal is to find his friend (Keith) who was kidnapped by some MIB; a friend who, from the OVA perspective, Burn knew for about a day but if that's enough for him to forge a friendship so strong good for him. Keith, on the other hand, has declared war to humanity to kill them all and create a world only for psychics; and to
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get revenge for being used as a guinea pig by the government, which is actually quite understandable. Wrong, but understandable.
Now, this could have been more than enough given the short format, but the authors felt the need to put in also all the other characters who I'm sure in the videogame all had their fair share of time to be prorperly explained, including some who appear just once or twice and don't actually do anything relevant for the plot to proceed, so we're given only bits of information here and there which in the end lead to a big fat nothing.
To go into details I'd have to make spoilers so I'll stop here, but I strongly advice anyone who does not know the original story NOT to watch this else you want to get a headache from not understanding half of what's going on on screen.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Mar 21, 2021
I don't know why this manga is still marked as ongoing, there's four volumes (23 chapters in total) and that's all.
STORY: 7
Rui Amamiya, a young Japanese boy who went to Gotham to investigate an incidente happened one year before where his parents supposedly died, finds himself in the middle of a fight between the Justice League (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, Flash and Cyborg) and the Injustice League (Joker, Lex Luthor, Ares, Orm, Sinestro, Anti-Flash and Cybog Superman) for the control of the Lay Lines, power lines that run throughout the entire planet and hold the key to the creation of a new
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world.
ART: 8
The artstyle is very clean and neat, with all characters easily recognizable and the action scenes (that make up the 75-80% of the story) easy to follow. Then again, this comes from the same mangaka of "Saint Seiya Lost Canvas" and I personally like her style a lot.
CHARACTER: 7
I'm not an expert of the DC Universe so I don't know if the heroes and villains' characters were in line with the original comics, the only one I know a bit more about is Batman and I think he's quite on character. As for Rui, the only external element, he doesn't have much of a presence even if he plays a crucial part in the conflict, he starts acting actively only around the later part of the third volume and even then he does more damage than help (I won't say more to avoid spoilers).
ENJOYMENT: 7
The story is a bit predictable, but the numerous action scenes keep the interest high and every hero has a chance to shine. Sadly, I found the ending a bit rushed, had there been a fifth volume, or even two more chapters, they could've at least handled Rui's inner conflict properly instead of solving it in such a superficial way.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Feb 5, 2021
English is not my mothertongue so I apologize in advance for any grammar or spelling mistakes.
Knowing this OVA was made just to promote the manga, I wasn't expecting anything complex, but this goes beyond being synthetic. It's just a few kinky scenes put together in some way, as if the producers thought that who watched was already familiar witht the source material.
There's litterally no introduction to any of the characters, not even the titular Kintarou, and even the motivation of the "bad guys" isn't well explained. Do they want t f*ck Makoto and take control over the school, as the summary says, or is the
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boss' real objective Kintarou? It's really confusing.
Artstyle and voice acting are good, and I actually found the censure style quite funny, but the lack of whatsoever trace of plot made it very hard for me to enjoy this ten-minutes compilation of tempted assaults and weird "punishments" (and absolutely no trace of underwear anywhere).
Of course, 10 minutes is a very short time to adapt anything, and if one wanted to have a general idea of what the manga is about this could probably be considered acceptable, so I won't completely advise against watching it, but I find it disappointing nonetheless.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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