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Feb 2, 2014
Campione! is an unfortunate anime.
The set up is cool, at least for the harem genre - random guy kills a diety and inherits his powers, which causes him to fight other deities and attract various pretty girls during his adventures who compete for his affections. And if you bother to read the light novels (there are over fifteen of them I think), the story and characters are pretty good for the most part.
But Campione! in its desire to hit the apparently required minimum harem four-girl threshold by the end of the series decides to cover way too much material in too short of
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time. It feels rushed from the beginning, making every development with the female characters feel even more unbelievable than normal for this type of anime. It also makes the misstep of taking the story chronologically instead of following the storyline in the books.
Finally, for those of us that watch dubs, the voice acting in this one is bad. The voice actress for Erica is terribly miscast.
Art is good, not great.
Overall this anime could be a lot better if the anime staff had put more faith into the underlying source material rather than making a checklist and forcing too much into too little space. Do yourself a favor if you are thinking about this series. First read the light novels (you can find them online). Then check out the series so you'll be able to fill in the gaps in your head.
Hopefully, another studio will take a crack at this one after the light novel series puts out a bunch more volumes in another few years. There is a lot of potential with the source material. But I doubt the anime made enough of an impact to get another season green-lit.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jan 31, 2014
This series is a solid 9.5. As it is criminally under rated here on myanimelist, I decided to round up rather than down.
I'm going to cut the book report/essay style of reviewing and cut to the chase.
Arpeggio is a series that sneaks up on you. At first, you think you are watching a typical pew-pew style anime with naval ships taking the place of giant robots or spaceships. But then, when you least expect it, the series does a terrific job of exploring what it means to be human. As the characters evolve and develop they begin
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to grow on you and by the time you feel the series was too short and you don't want to say goodbye.
There are a couple of weak spots. The actual human characters are somewhat underdeveloped, largely because the series focuses on what most of its audience cares about, the ship-program girls. The male lead largely serves as a foil for the female lead. Considering the terrific job the writers did, however, this seems like more of a product of only having 12 episodes to work with and the need to keep the action and tensions up, so these are minor complaints.
Art is excellent. I don't get why so many people trash it because it implements some CGI. CGI, when done right as here, blends well with traditional styles. Why does everything have to become politicized?
So if you're looking for something cool to watch give this series a try. It's only 12 episodes so you won't waste much time if it turns out to not be for you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Feb 13, 2013
If you first watch the anime and then read the manga, you'll have a blast. But if you first read the manga and then watch the anime (especially the second season) you'll end up extremely frustrated. I'll get into this more in my review of the second season, but keep this in mind when reading some of the reviews.
I'm going to forgo the normal category review and get straight into the meat of this season. The anime version of R + V is a shounen mixture of high school slice of life/harem that finishes up with a battle at the end.
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It mostly follows an episodic structure with some character development between the "episodes".
Classic harem tropes are followed, and you'll recognize some of the classic female characters in this sort of anime. Also, the lead guy, in order to not make him a complete douchebag, is largely clueless as to the level of affection of his "friends". Not that these harem elements are a bad thing--many of the best anime have semi-harems or harems usually (Steins;gate, Code Geass, Evangelion, etc)--and when done right provides funny and interesting stories for the male lead.
The characterization is superb, the stories generally interesting, and the setting pitch perfect. It its category, shounen/harem, it's probably one of the best if not the best. The art, sound, and voice acting are all solid.
So why the negative reviews? Well, the anime suffers the same problem as what happened with the first Fullmetal Alchemist. The anime's creators for whatever reason will sometimes depart from the source material or mix up the stories, resulting in a weaker product. It also underestimates its audience by dialing up the fan service to overkill. But the first season does stay closer to its source material, and thus is significantly stronger than the second season.
I would highly recommend watching the anime first and then jumping into the manga. Think of the anime as an appetizer until you can move onto the main course.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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May 29, 2012
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.
Fate/Zero answers the problem with prequels. How do you make something compelling when the audience already knows how it will all end? Embrace the darkness and finality.
A word of warning, the rest of my review will assume that the reader has already watched Fate/stay night and the first season of Fate/Zero. If you have not, then the best thing you can do is stop now and return after you have seen those chapters in the Fate series.
Fans of Fate/stay night already know that things will end badly for the main characters, after all this is necessary
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in order for the setup of what the audience has already seen. But unlike the most infamous of dark prequels, Star Wars 1-3, Fate/Zero has the guts to take that challenge and turn it into an opportunity.
The protagonist of Fate/Zero, Kiritsugu Emiya, is presented as a cypher in the first and most of the second seasons. He is shown as absolutely ruthless, a fitting characteristic for the ultimate victor of this round of the Grail war. At the same time, Kiritsugu is oddly compelling since he is the badass of the series -- taking down opponents with guile and strategy rather than the nobleness of his character unlike his successor in Fate/stay night.
Like another cypher in the famous TV series Breaking Bad, Gustavo Fring, the writers eventually take the viewer into the backstory of Kiritsugu with a monster payoff. In an effort to avoid giving out spoilers, lets just say that after you watch the two finest episodes in the franchise, you will not look at the main character in the same light.
Similarly, the primary antagonist in the series, Kirei Kotomine, is also fleshed out nicely. Although his motivations are more unclear then Kiritsugu, the viewer is rewarded with actions that flesh out his "big bad" credentials nicely.
Combined with fan favorite Servants Saber and newcomer Alexander the Great, an excellent supporting cast, and none of the boring filler-subplots that plagued Fate/stay night to its detriment, Fate/Zero provides an excellent story for the anime fan craving more than the typical shounen of broody adolescents grappling with inner doubt and awesome powers. Destined to become a classic piece of anime storytelling Fate/Zero provides the viewer with excellent animation, sound, story, and characters. 10 out of 10, for those that like their anime dark and action packed!
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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May 16, 2010
When you think about it: Each episode = around 20 minutes if you edit out the song and recap. 20 * 50 = 1000 minutes or 16.667 hours of anime. Jesus, I wish I had that time back. Not that Gundam Seed was bad, it just wasn't good enough to warrant that degree of investment. But when watching, you'll get into the subplots, and before you know it...bam! 16 hours and change down the drain. This is a good anime when you have time to kill and nothing to do. Otherwise, you can probably do better.
God I feel
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used.
STORY: GS is like highschool with mechas and military. The plot takes place between genetically improved humans v. regular humans. The regs have greater numbers, but the genetically improved humans are better fighters and hence are winning the war. In the middle of this the protagonist ends up fighting for the normals to protect his normal friends. I wish I could remember the names for everyone but I forgot. This is because the story is largely simple and involves some romantic subplots, chases, internal protagonist angst (a requirement in mecha anime apparently), and best-friend-versus-best-friend done much more successfully in Code Geass.
Art: The art in this reminded me of the cartoons GI Joe and Transformers. In other words, not very good but tolerable. Production values are obvious in this as there are a lot of internal monologues with no animation (to shave off a few seconds here and there) and a TON of flashbacks. It's like they used the budget for 25 episodes to make 50 and it shows.
SOUND: Why do the have this category? I didn't register anything objectionable so it was probably ok.
CHARACTER: While the characters are not great, they get addictive to watch. Think of other shows you may have wasted hours on for no darn reason (Saved by the Bell, professional wrestling, etc) and you'll realize that for some reason you want to know how it all sorts out. This anime series knows this and takes advantage of you.
ENJOYMENT: I don't know why but I actually enjoyed this series. It has a lot of flaws: melodrama, internal monologues up the wazoo, fairly simplistic plot and ending, and waaaay too many flashbacks. But despite it all, it was a fun watch.
OVERALL: I could watch the series once with some enjoyment, but never again. There are so many flashbacks it's like you watched the series 3 times by the time you hit the final.
Note: This review applies to both the first and second series of Gundam Seed. Despite some other views, the second series was similar to the first to not really impact my impression of the whole. I disagree those who said that the second series was really that much worse, other than the introduction of a terrible protagonist that everyone hated. Thankfully, and probably due to fan reaction, the focus on him shifts quickly to fan favorites.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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May 16, 2010
Finally! A Bones animation I didn't like.
A oddly well-received anime, it must translate poorly to Western viewers.
STORY: One of the hardest things in anime is setting up an explanation on (1) why giant robots run around battling each other and (2) why teenagers would be allowed to pilot them. RahXephon fails badly. It forms an alternative alien society that has singing giant robots with an Egyptian/Mayan motif, throws in various conspiratorial entities and characters, adds a dash of military, and blends in a gaggle of harem romances. All of this mixes together to form an unfortunate scramble that was a tad overcooked.
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The protagonist is boring, most of the female romantic interests (I think that there were like 10 or so) are uninteresting, and the other supporting characters undeveloped. The military unit acts like they are all in high school. I won't spoil the plot but it doesn't make any sense.
ART: This is Bones, so it is good. Not as good as DTB or E7, but pretty good. I hated the design of the mecha, but since the mecha don't really matter that much anyways it's not a biggie.
SOUND: For an anime based on singing and music, the sound in this anime is pretty boring.
CHARACTER: See my story section, it says it all.
ENJOYMENT: I wish I would have skipped this anime so I could have spent my time watching or re-watching something else.
OVERALL: 5. The art is good, the rest lags.
Final assessment: those who said that if you hated Evan, you would probably like this were wrong. While not as terrible as Evan it's not that great. If I hadn't enjoyed Code Geass and to a lesser extent Gurren, I would have given up on the genre. But while I won't avoid future mecha anime I sure won't seek them out either after seeing this "classic"!
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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May 10, 2010
Finally, a series that addresses how people with super-powers would be viewed by the government: a threat.
STORY: Darker Than Black is a perfect mixture of action, mystery, and superpower fiction. It takes place in a world much like our own, except there was an incident leading to the existence of "Contractors" who are imbued with powers like electrical blasts, possession, freezing, weather, etc. Each contractor must pay a price after using their powers - which can range from fun (like drinking), nothing major (baking), annoying (smoking for a non-smoker), or terrible (drinking the blood of children). The Contractors are also said to
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be purely rational, although it is difficult to see that 100% the case and one ends up wondering if it is more of an initial manifestation state that is later reinforced by expectation. There are also "Dolls" that are emotion-less telepathic like entities that can monitor Contractors but do not seem to exhibit any personality. The story starts off as a mission-of-the-week type series involving the protagonist who serves a mysterious, seemingly-criminal entity called the Syndicate, but evolves into a Contractors v. Normal main series that is quite enjoyable. The story line is meant to be dark, but not existential bleak dark. Think instead dark but fun.
Art: Top notch work by Bones. This studio tends to put out the best stuff. The fight scenes are great!
Sound: Great, as it follows the storyline - whether action packed or melancholy perfectly.
Character: Almost all of the characters are well developed, not just the protagonist. Even characters that originally seem like a one-note get fleshed out nicely and usually surprisingly.
Enjoyment: This is my all-time favorite anime series. In my view it beats everything I've seen. I've been looking for a better anime series, and after watching Geass, Gundam, Eureka 7, Gurren, Phantom, Bebop (saw it before), NGE, and others I have yet to find one. If Bones decides to stop after the OVA's it's currently putting out I'll be bummed.
Overall: The best of what anime has to offer, don't miss this one!
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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May 9, 2010
Hugely experimental and thankfully unique, Evangelion is a roaring failure.
Yeah, there might be spoilers but I'll try to stay away from them.
After watching several series, I finally ran across something that I actively disliked. Maybe if you are a (shudder) person who enjoys a nice bit of Camus to go along with your nightshade cocktail, you will really dig this series. Otherwise this one is going to be painful.
STORY: Evan starts off moderately interesting. For some convoluted reason a teenager is the only one who can pilot a super-mega-awesome-gigantor-robot for some convoluted reason. We've seen it before -- it allows the
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target shounen audience to have characters they can identify (i.e. lazy kid) get to play the hero instead of someone more realistic -- say a 30-year-old ace captain with years of conflict experience and (more importantly) some emotional maturity. But hey, not like this is the first time. So we get the normal mecha-on-mecha action sequences, which are kinda cool, and the expected teen drama stuff. Oh, and some daddy issues, because what is anime without a justified hatred of one's parents?
AND THEN THE SERIES LOSES IT'S FREAKING MIND
There is no better way to put it. I read on wikipedia that the person responsible for this travesty of philosophic trite had a bad batch of depression, and it shows. Anytime sci-fi has to double back to religious fantasy, it fails. I "got" the story but I hated it. Around this time the series shifts to adult themes over shounen, which is kinda cool. But since everyone was afraid of losing their jobs at the time (per Wikipedia "but also partly because by this point, production had begun running out of funding and failing to meet the schedule; this collapse has been identified by at least one Gainax employee as the impetus for Evangelion's turn into metafiction...") they decide to spew out a bunch of woe-is-me-the-world-sucks garbage.
ART: Art here is decent. Not great, but decent. Since this was a 90's anime, this is very excusable. At the time, the art had to be fantastic. Thank god I started watching anime now than back in the day.
Sound: Passable. Nothing great, nothing too easy to beat up on.
Character: Anyone who tells you that they liked the characters is lying (a) to themselves and/or (b) to you. All of them, especially the protagonist, have extremely annoying qualities (whinny, self-absorbed, withdrawn) that begin to drag on one's nerves. The protagonist particularly sucks -- 4 weeks of basic bootcamp as Gomer Pile would have given him something to really cry about.
Enjoyment: There is a reason why this series almost bankrupted the company. This is not what all anime should be, entertaining.
Overall: I was really looking forward to this anime after hearing such great things about it. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why this is so well-regarded. I think it's because if you are the type of person that thinks the same as as some of the characters, this anime will sing to your soul or something.
Sometimes classics are deserving, sometimes they are not. This anime is the latter.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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