Karas

Story: I guess it's better to say there was no real story. I was completely confused throughout the first half, we were plunged into the middle of the story with no explanation and no idea what was going on. The second half was filled with predictable cliches and I found it was more stimulating to have no idea what was going on as it drove me to continue to watch in order to figure out what was happening. Overall, the plot was boring and something we have seen a thousand times before, only a lot more vague.

Art: The series is undeniably beautiful, the animation ... ranks up there with the likes of Gankutsuou. I'll even go far as to say that Karas, just like Trinity Blood, doesn't deserve such beautiful animation. If you want to watch this series then just mute the DVD, listen to your favorite CD, and enjoy the beautiful imagery. Don't worry, like I said before there's no story to pay attention to.

Sound: the music was all right, once again nothing special. I wouldn't go out of my way to buy the OST. The dub wasn't anything exceptional, Echo's voice actor in particular was very bland and unemotional.

Character: The characters are just as cliched and vague as the plot. There's little to no development and hardly any explanation as to what their motivation might be. Everyone is shallow and two-dimensional.

Overall this was a huge disappointment. It was as if Tatsunoko Productions simply wanted to show off their animation skills and threw together the story as an afterthought. With more focus on developing a plot and interesting characters this could have been an excellent series, unfortunately they forgot that good animation does not make a good series. Just like video games, it doesn't matter how amazing the visuals, it is the story that is truly engaging.

Karas is a six episode, original OVA written by Yoshida Shin and brought to us by Tatsunoko. That's right, the same studio that brought us Kyattou Ninden Teyandee, SKET Dance & C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control. Karas was actually their 40th anniversary work, beginning release in 2005 and ending in '07. So, they must have put a lot of effort into it, right? Well, let's look and see.

Story:

There's an unseen world alongside ours. The world of youkai. Unseen, they live alongside us in relative peace, or they did. Youkai with physical bodies combined with machines are threatening the balance and ... they're out for human blood. It's up to Yurine, the spirit of the city and her servant Karas, a being that's neither fully human nor youkai, to bring down these youkai and their leader. The former Karas, Eko.

Let's start with the obvious story problem. We've seen basically this exact story before, a lot. And Karas doesn't really bring anything new to the table in terms of story telling or execution. Which results in a narrative that's very trite and predictable. Every time they introduce a plot point, you know where they're going to take it. That being said, I can give the series a little credit. They have creatures with a need to feed on blood and they actually think of using donated blood. The problem there is that it doesn't work and there's no reasonable explanation for why it doesn't.

Characters:

The characters in this are slightly atypical, at least, a few of them are. Otoha is not your standard hero character. The Nue we spend a good chunk of time with is not a standard character. Eko, however, is a pretty generic villain. He's one of those “I'm going to destroy everything because the world is rotten” types of villains. His followers are pretty much the same henchmen that villain always has. The human characters are pretty boring.

Art:

This is most definitely a series that favours style over substance. With the big spectacle action sequences being the best part of the series. The artwork and animation in general are really good with some very impressive visuals and a unique aesthetic presentation. Yeah, there's something in this series that actually stands out. However, you'd think they'd have done better with the final action sequence. The whole battle is like a formulaic JRPG boss fight where the big bad keeps revealing new forms only to have his actual final form be a bit anti-climactic and the battle from there being just over way too fast.

Sound:

The voice acting is competent. Not brilliant or even particularly good, but perfectly passable. The music from Ike Yoshihiro, however, is really good. The action sequence music especially. It is intense and bad ass.

Ho-yay:

There might be a little when we find out about Otoha's past and the young man he almost ran away with.

Final Thoughts:

Karas isn't a bad series. It has some strong art, animation and music. That being said, it's not a good series either. The narrative itself is pretty weak, using ideas we've seen explored before and explored better and the characters are just average. My final rating is going to be a 5/10. It's an average series. If you just want to see a spectacle of action and neat visuals, you'll probably enjoy watching it but if you're more interested in seeing strong characters and a unique story, you probably won't be into it. Next week I'm finally reviewing Ruroni Kenshin.

So a short series featuring a sort of adult orientated Power Rangers & the kind of storyline you'd expect from WildStorm Comics. Yep, it's as fucking awesome as it sounds.

So the story? What little there is (or I could understand, at least) was well...simple. There because it was the only way to push to the next fight scene without seeming like it had no substance at all. But pointless story is only there to waste time and make more money. So good on them for not including that! But if you came to this series (or movies depending on how you look at ... it) expecting an amazing story then you're an idiot. However the devices it used were pretty cool. Setting up what would make an amazing universe if they ever decided to make more episodes (which they probably won't). However I did feel towards the end that they kinda confused themselves with their own story and decided to make stuff up to fill in the gaps. "Isn't that what all storywriters do?!" you ask. No, a storywriter is meant to work on a coherent flow, not just adding things that they deem necessary to make their mess make sense at the end. It just shows a lack of care or effort. I think much like their unregulated use of the time of the show they created, they didn't regulate their own time creating this either.

Art? I actually wasn't a big fan of any of the CGI Sequences in this which is what I presume was the main spectacle and selling point for this (I don't know). It showed it's age and I found it slightly hard to follow. The complexity of the designs they created however was jaw dropping. The drawn animation though I thought was absolutely fantastic. Everything just screamed high budget long time dedication. It felt cartoony and realistic at the same time and the speed and flow made the non CGI fights the best in the whole thing for me. Too many animes come out lately with cut corners in the animation or terrible animation in general. If I wanted to see rushed still images I'd read WSJ. It's nice to see something actually caring for it's animation, it IS anime. Such contrast to it's story...

Sound? As always with me I never really have much to say here. I watched this in Japanese with Subs and as ever the Japanese and their voice acting is pure perfection. The music was subtly in the background but helped set the mood at the right moments. So I suppose perfection here then? (I give nothing a straight 10.)

Characters? I felt considering the length of this (about 3 hours) some characters were in it too much and some not enough. They were trying to cram too much in, but I still think they could have given everything decent amounts of screen time if they just regulated stuff better. About 3/4 of the first movie was wasted on small unimportant Machine Demons that seemed to be there to show off Karas and the CGI they made to animate him but they didn't really need to waste THAT much time on it, the fights weren't particularly epic. Karas was so much stronger than them the fights ended in basically one flamboyant attack. Although that flamboyant stuff was epic in itself. THEN they finally started moving onto the key, powerful characters (right at the END of the first movie annoyingly) and sadly it was pretty much left undisclosed what happened to most of them. If I knew more episodes to come I wouldn't be so harsh about this. But I think they were wasted.

Enjoyment? MASSIVE! Even though this review possibly seemed quite negative I really did love this. I didn't know one on one fights in a city setting could be so grand!

So overall? The CGI is a little weak now what 6 - 7 years have passed since the first 3 episodes were made (or the first movie, depending on how you look at it). But it's still pretty damn cool all the same, just a little hard to follow. The story is pretty much non existent and a lot of the cool characters are wasted. So really I should hate this, but in all honesty I still had so much fun & it being only 6 episodes meant nothing dragged. It was just epic and GAR after more epic and GAR! But I gave it this score simply because the flaws can't just be ignored because it was fun. But on enjoyment and fun alone this would get a 9 in my books.

When going into this series I really didn't know what to expect, it's only 6 episodes but it also took two years to make. When looking at the art for the series you can really see why it had taken them 2 years to finish this OVA. The art is beautiful and so is the music to each episode. I found the music to be quite the touch a scene needed to really impact the story. However that's where my compliments to this series end. At times the blend between 2D and 3D felt jarring and brought me out of the story(though this may be ... due to being an artist for a living). I found the over all plot to be way too confusing and feel it would've been better told in a 12 episode series over 6. Everything felt rushed and didn't give me proper time to built up and allow me to get invested in the series. The characters all felt very bland besides the older detective, and at times the other characters came off emotionless compared to him. I feel I would've enjoyed this series more if it was longer so it gave us more time to get to know the characters. As far as recommending it, I can only do so knowing that the series is 6 episodes which make it easy to sit through for a couple of hours. Otherwise I recommned skipping it and moving onto something else.