Ueki no Housoku

The law of ueki is a great anime. It's not revolutionary or anything and the story is basic but i enjoyed it. To say the truth i was sceptical at first because of it's length. I know 51 episodes isn't a huge number of episodes but i only watched anime with 12-26 episodes so the law of ueki wasn't in my top interests. Now i am happy that i watched it.

(story) The story is about a kid called Ueki Kousuke. An normal high schooler that is picked by a god candicate? What is that? Well as the name says it's a candicate for a god ... and each candicate has to pick a highschool kid to fight for them. Ueki is one of those kids. Thankfully he is given a power to defend himself. What is that power you ask? Well he can change garbage to.........trees. Not and the most helpful power but ok. It's still better than nothing i suppose. Now ueki has to fight other highschoolers for his god candicate to become a god.

As i said the story isn't anything special. It's typical stuff and isn't really tempting, but the anime shines on other factors.

(Characters) The characters is the best thingh about this anime. When a new character is introduced, it always has some characteristics about the. For example their class and what kind of food they like. The main character Ueki is also a common highschooler that eats a lot and doesn't care about anything to such an extent that it is funny. The friends he meet along the way are also amusing and funny at some parts, but since i don't want to spoil it i won't be mentioning them.

(visuals) Visually it is great, as every anime should. It's colors are lively but it's like every other anime as i said.

(Sound) Sound based it's good but again the same as ever. It's the common Sound effects but it has a fairly good soundtrack and 2 amazing opening songs. I listen to the opening songs almost every day.

(enjoyment) The law of ueki is a funny anime with a lot of fighting, a lot of weird and unusual powers and a little bit of drama here and there.

I recommend you watch it if you have some free time and you don't get bored of an anime quickly.

For me, it's a masterpiece of shounen. I'm not saying that this anime is better than the popular shounen. Since it's already finished and I think it's one of those underrated anime. For those who disagree, I respect your standards. I've been badly wanting to watch this. Okay, so much for my opinions. I like the plot because it already catches my attention how much more if you watch it. Right? I like the way the artist draws the emotions on the face of the characters. That one episode leaves that remarkable emotion for me. Argrhhh! If I say more that it will be spoiled. ... I really like the character of Ueki and his powers. Even Ai Mori the way she meddles with some things. I really enjoyed watching this anime the comedy acts, the unique powers and the friendship. For those who still did not watch it. I recommend you should watch it.

Story:
The story is every shounen lover's dream. Story was original and intense. Its about a tournament where 100 heavenly beings each choose a middle school student and gives them an ability where all of them has to battle so they can win the zai ability which you can wish for any power or talent and your master would be the new god in heaven as well. There are three rounds in the tournament.

Art:
Fights are one of the best but the animation is very old and low quality

Sound:
OPS and EDS were amazing. The first opening really suits the anime

Character:
The main character is a laid-back person ... that believes deeply in his own justice. His ability is the ability to change trash into trees. The abilities are actually changing something onto another thing so don't be expecting canons from tits or water powers. NOPE!
SPOILER!!
Later on in the show you learn the character is actually a heavenly being or born in heaven so he is a lot more powerful the the other contestants. when being a heavenly being you get levels on how strong you are from level one to ten. each level you access a sacred weapon which are just really powerful weapons.

Kurogane(Level 1 sacred weapon)
Its a really large canon the main character pulls out of nowhere and shoots out huge ball like a normal canon

Fudo(Level 2 sacred weapon)
A huge fist from the ground in place as a defensive shield

Ranma (Level 3 sacred weapon)
A humongous knife/sword

Mashu(Level 4 sacred weapon)
A square smiley face from the ground crushing the opponent between the teeth

Pick(Level 5 sacred weapon)
A long rectangle pole to hit the attacker

Raika(Level 6 sacred weapon)
A pair of brown skates the main character uses to run really fast

Gulliver(Level 7 sacred weapon)
A box on a green platform coming from the ground trapping the enemy

Namihana(Level 8 sacred weapon)
A huge flexible whip to attack the enemy

Seiku(Level 9 sacred weapon)
A pair of wings

Moah(Level 10 sacred weapon)
This weapon has no form but its a spirit I guess depending on the will of the user. (Ueki's moah is his master and his will is to protect his justice and friends.)

Enjoyment:
Fights were amazing and there were a lot as well

Overall:
WATCH IT!!! it is amzing if you like my hero academia you will like this. PROMISE. Its also the most underrated anime I have ever seen

Story: 8 (While can sound absurd to some people, i massively appreciate the attempt of being a completely different story for a take in shonen)

Art: 6 (Granted that it is an older series, but animation consistency is still important, while some fights looks great, some looks clunky, but nothing eyebreaking)

Sound: 7 (Some lackluster use of sounds, but overall nothing too distracting, the voice acting is great)

Characters: 9 (Some charaters can be obnoxious sometimes, but the pay off of their characters are always very well excecuted)

Enjoyment: 7 (Some episodes are honestly a drag, but the overall watch through is quite an enjoyable ride)

The Law of Ueki ... is not for everyone, it is for those who seeks a different type of anime in regards of its execution, even with that, there's still chances people would still turn their back against this anime. but at least for me... it is a great shonen concept with ambitious premise, good characters, and great fights which relies on a very tactical rather than offensive blow trading battle

Overall: 8 (An Ambitious Shonen With Good Execution)

While scavenging the web for something to nourish my hunger for action oriented anime, I came across this little refreshment and picked it up. It’s a shounen anime. Awesome! So what can the MC do? Turn trash into trees. Cool! Wait, what? He can turn trash….into….trees?! Yep, didn’t read that wrong.

This is the first thing Law of Ueki hits you with. But albeit a weak start, the anime truly develops brilliantly. It’s one of those anime which are either under-appreciated or forgotten. It’s got a clichéd story (perhaps?), clichéd characters, clichéd mc, clichéd concept yet non clichéd powers, excellent fights and outright comedy. It’s ... about time to expand upon those features.

-------------Story-------------

The story is pretty generic. The formula of including tournaments in battle shounen to declare a winner, popularized by Dragon Ball, found its way into countless shounen that followed; Law of Ueki is no exception. However, the execution here is done excellently. It’s not just fighting out in an arena confined within large stands for viewers. Anyplace can become the battleground.
The plot is that the celestial king, a Godlike mortal being, has to choose his successor, so instead of picking someone at random he chooses 100 king candidates, each of whom can choose a middle schooler human representative, give him/her a unique power and let them battle it out. The candidate whose representative wins will be the next king and the representative will receive the “Talent of Blank”, that is to say, any one talent s/he may desire. All power users have talents and whenever they use their power to hurt non-power users, one of their talents are gone; a person with zero talent ceases to exist and vanishes without a trace. Little do they know there are beings other than humans taking part in the battle. As the story progresses it starts to become a bit more interesting, and though somewhere halfway down the road it kinda becomes like a typical shounen tournament, the fights, which are what shounen are pretty much about, more than makes up for it. Aside from the serious plot, there’s a lot of comedy in this series as well and they can make you laugh like an idiot; though that primarily depends on an individual’s sense of humor. One more thing, don’t expect any romance in this one. That factor is next to non-existent in this anime. But all in all, the plot is good and well executed.

-------------Sound-------------

The music is great and complements the story well. The OST’s really gets you pumped up in certain situations and of course in the fights. The voice actors did a very good job on their roles as well; I’m talking about the dub by the way. The openings and endings are standard J-Pop tracks which are nice; just don’t expect any “Unravel” or “Brave Shine” in this one, and you’ll be fine.

-------------Art/Animation-------------

Keep in mind that this is an anime from 2005. Judging by that the animation/art style is very well done. It doesn’t have overwhelmingly eye popping visuals like Fate/Stay Night UBW, but neither is it an anime you can’t watch without your eyes bleeding. Given the timeframe, it’s really pretty decent.

-------------Characters-------------

Aaahh, now this is where Law of Ueki truly shines. The large cast of characters in the show are almost all likeable characters. Take our hero Ueki for example – he appears as hollow and empty at the beginning of the series, but as the story progresses his character becomes more and more appreciable. With a strong sense of “righteousness”, he’ll throw himself to help just about anyone, friends, strangers, even enemies. Starting from zero, Ueki not only masters his potential but also learns to use them in a variety of cunning way. His battle ingenuity becomes more and more apparent and at times you can’t refrain from saying “brilliant!!”……. unless you’ve watched about 300 anime and nothing surprises you anymore, but that’s an exception I suppose (and it probably means you’ve seen this one already). And then we have Ai Mori who starts out as a straight-man comic relief but eventually becomes a much more important main character. Every character has substantial developments and great backstories, backstories that may seem foolish and childish but given most of them being experienced as a child, they hold up in a great manner. Protagonists, supporting characters, antagonists, and even the Celestial King has nice backstories which allow us to understand and sympathize with them. However the one bad thing about them is all the protagonists tend to use overly cheesy dialogues regarding “friendship” and “fighting for others”; and this is true whether you’re watching the subs or listening to the dubs. The portrayal of “righteousness” is strong with this one, a little too strong. Dialogues that remind you of “fairy tail” at times. It’s about the only thing that annoyed me quite a bit. Nevertheless, in the end you end up liking most, if not all, of the characters shown in the series.

-------------Fights and powers-------------

This isn’t a section typically included in a review but I think this anime needs one anyway. There is a wide variety of unique powers in this anime, powers that can come off as really strange. Other than the MC’s unique power, there’s the power to change towels into Iron and power to shift your voice through portraits etc. Bottom-line, they are unique and there are a lot of them; kinda reminds of “One Piece” in a way. However, there is a limiting condition to all the powers; meaning they can be used only if certain conditions are met.

As to the fights, they…are….awesome! Trust me, the fight scenes are excellently done, and they’re not just mindless battles. A lot of cunning, strategies, and on-spot tactics are present throughout the numerous fight scenes. No, there’s no Hi-def slow-motion sword-fights in this one but seriously, that’s not something you should even expect from Law of Ueki. And the predictability is somewhat less than your average shounen anime. There are times when you think something’s gonna happen now, but it doesn’t. Instead something happens unexpectedly later on, when you’re not expecting it anymore. In any case, the fights truly live up to the expectations concerning a shounen.

------------- Overall: 7.5+/10 -------------

Law of Ueki is a splendid shounen; the creativity behind the battles are what makes it even more enjoyable. Ueki, or anyone else in this anime for that matter, is no Natsu Dragneel who gets up, wipes his mouth and says “I’m gonna kick your ass”, and then wins. No, it’s not that simple. There are a lot of thoughts behind those fights. I would’ve actually given it an 8 but those overly cheesy dialogues kinda made me tone down my scoring. Then again, a 7 would never justify this show as it would be unfairly low rating; even 7.5 might not cut it, hence the plus. As a fractional score can't be given here on MAL, I chose an 8 nevertheless. It’s an anime I would definitely recommend to any shounen lovers.

It was decent anime after dropping it before i decided to re-watch it again and after several episodes i began to enjoy it.

There were a few things that could have made it more enjoyable for me like a bit of romance and maybe more of life after all the battles were over but that's a personal thing i guess. If your looking for decent anime to watch i'd recommend it.

If you like battle anime you will probably like this it's tournament based and has a pretty good concept to it which is fairly unique in terms of how they get powers and what the ... powers do compared to other super power anime.

It's a bit like yu yu hakusho in term of the tournament element although the tournament itself is a bit different in the fact it's not a fixed location and the characters can be getting on with there daily lives while competing at least for the first half of the anime so if you enjoyed that you you will probably enjoy this.

Warning: Minor Spoilers
Initially I watched this show in dub and I can say it definitely hindered my enjoyment and immersion in this show. None of the voice acting was that great and the monologuing was almost unbearable. If you ever try to watch this please do it in ... the sub.

Plot: This anime is essentially one giant tournament arc, and the power system compliments it surprisingly well. The powers, as bizarre as they are, keep you entertained with the unique ways some of the characters use them. The main issue with it I had though was how they kept adding different parts to it seemingly randomly to help Ueki grow stronger. These different parts being the sacred weapons and the level 2 sort of just appear randomly with no foreshadowing or mentioning whatsoever.

Characters: This category is the primary factor to why I enjoyed this anime so much. Although at the beginning there’s nothing great about the characters. Ai was just an annoying girl who screamed and Ueki was just… boring. After Ueki fought Robert in around episode 7 was where the shine of this anime first started surfacing. We got to see the first glimpse of Ueki’s sense of righteousness that he embodies. Mr. K’s influence from his righteous act of saving Ueki really hit him to allow for the start of his development and character progression. Ueki is a great main character that encapsulates the themes of the show marvelously. Righteousness is the main theme presented in this show, and Ueki perfectly embodies it. As Mr. K says, "I can't tolerate people who fall below my own standard of righteousness. I've observed a lot of people since I first came here, but none of them possess the righteousness I was seeking. I was beginning to lose interest in this realm... thinking of going back to the Celestial world. Then I met him... Ueki possesses the sense of decency that I discovered was extremely rare in this world... And his righteousness was true." In Ueki's battle with Onimon,(Ep.8) he shuns Onimon for having to rely on the talent of blank to protect his village, Onimon replies, asking what he would do with it. Ueki doesn't know and hasn't thought about it, "Then why are you in these battles in the first place?" Ueki says "To protect the talent of blank from evil... That's what Mr. K wanted... That's our righteousness." He is only doing it out of his righteousness, because that's just what he represents. Over the course of the show his righteousness only grows with the rest of the cast. All of the main cast get a decent amount of depth and development. Even the antagonists like Robert and Hanon effectively serve their narrative and thematic purposes. Thematic being how righteousness is stronger than evil. The majority of the smaller antagonists also get smaller backstories to understand why they’re in this tournament in the first place and you can see the variation with each story and the dynamics of all the opposing teams are slightly different in their own ways. The only thing I think wasn’t used to its potential was Ueki and Mori’s dynamic. Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t bad, but it just wasn’t used to its potential. We don't really get to see either why Ai followed Ueki so much. No backstory to their friendship, nothing. I really think that Ai was the weakest in the main cast despite having the 2nd most screen time. At the end of the show they did add on it a bit by displaying the trust she had for Ueki but they could’ve definitely capitalized off of it more.

Music/animation: Let’s start with the animation first. This anime was released in 2005 so you do see the black bars on the sides, but the animation wasn’t bad. You can easily see what’s going on at all times, and I never had any issues watching it at all. There wasn’t a moment where it looked clunky either it showed what it needed and that’s it. With this entire anime being a tournament arc you’d expect the fights to be dull since this anime is relatively old but it’s actually the opposite. The fights are always thrilling to watch. The climaxes of Ueki's fights are always exciting because he barely ever wins off of sheer brute force. Ueki uses his powers very smartly to win and winning by simply outsmarting the opponent adds to the thrill of the fight. It's not even just Ueki, Sano and Rinko had some great fights where they only won through smarts. Even with this anime releasing around 2005 with not the greatest graphics it still holds up today because it's still easy to tell what's going on, the unpredictability of the fights and the music is still great when it plays at the end of a fight. The soundtracks are great and always adds to the fight scenes and emotional moments.

Inconsistencies: While I do love this anime, there have been a select few parts that either don’t make sense or just don’t work out. For one, the jokes. This one only applies to the start of the series because the jokes were too heavily reliant on the cringe factor of them and they weren’t funny at all. The most prominent one I’m thinking of was when Ueki was on the subway and he was just randomly dancing because he heard music and his body just couldn’t stop because he had “the power to dance.”
The second inconsistency I spotted was a bit more of a problem that ate away at me. That was when Ueki fought Robert for the 2nd time he said that his “Level 2” was being able to use multiple sacred weapons at once. But many episodes later he said that he never unlocked his level 2, and that he really needed to keep training for it. Despite that, I can’t think of any more besides just those 2.

Overall:
This anime is character based, and doesn’t take itself too seriously, and with that I love it. The themes are executed well through multiple characters and dynamics.

If you are looking for a plot/drama heavy shounen anime then this is definitely not for you.

But if all you want from the anime is having a fun time with characters and great fight, then I recommended this show.

The character's ability, rules and setting are really fun to watch and making all the fights in the show really interesting. There's barely any drama behind most fight...its just character thinking of strategy or power to overcome each other.

The characters are great fun. You probably wouldn't get to know their deep backstory. However, they are mostly ooze with charisma and cool power that makes the show fun. ... The character in this show are really cool but we barely get to know most of them, which can make a show a bit disappointing.

Nothing original about this anime. Many inconsistencies in the story line. Characters are boring and everything they do is predictable. I would have watched more of this anime if the dub was better, it's almost unwatchable. But the issue is not just the voices, the issue here lies in the script, it has this constant narrator feel. The girl, Ai, keeps narrating and describing the events as they occur, it's not necessary for that to exist here. We know how to watch anime and enjoy it without an obnoxious narrator voice coming from a character in a middle of a fight scene.

if you want to watch ueki watch this video and ignore the negative reviews https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6YOBqz4yX4 the show has a a rating above 7.5 so on avarage people rate it an 8. the characters and the enjoyment you will get is amazing so try watching it so watch at least the first 7 episodes and then you can truly see if its what you are looking for so anyway i think its a great series and you should watch.

characters like ueki are like the normal shounen protagonist they are brave determined and do what is right this character single handedly wcould give this show a 10 ... any day fo the week and every main character fights or contributes to the story so there are on useless characters also not going to spoil it but the intention on why they want to win is great

Law of Ueki seems like your run-of-the-mill seinen show. Goofy lead character who's a bit of a knucklehead, utterly relentless and with a heart of gold? Check. Supporting cast which includes a potential rival, a reformed villain, childhood best friend and comic relief? Check. Tournament with stronger and stronger opponents? Check. Friendship right down to the very end? Of course.

But what distinguishes this show from possibly every other seinen show I've ever seen is curiously enough, it's battles. The whole point of battles in this show are the "Laws". Some are novel, ridiculous, situation-based, but most importantly: they are unbreakable. This means that depending on ... the law, winning a battle by overpowering an opponent through sheer force of will (or a power up) is not always feasible. In those situations, the battle plays out as game of wit, particularly in Ueki and friends struggling to win by first figuring out the actual conditions of the Laws, before finding a way to use it to their advantage.

While these battles are probably nowhere near as spectacular as it's predecessors (or even the new stuff), the "punchline" when they figure out how to win before proceeding to do so is probably some of the most satisfying stuff I've seen in the genre. It works in a way like a "whodunit". There are clues everywhere, you just have to be able to spot them. While Ueki does get some power-ups and eventually becomes very, very strong, the structure of the battles often make such power inutile. And right to the last boss battle, the idea of constraints that cannot be transcended by overpowering the opponent with sheer will power is very much the theme.

I find that a pretty refreshing escape from the usual shonen fare, that basically goes all the way from Dragonball to Demon Slayer. While I do find shows of that ilk enjoyable, Law of Ueki presents us with something fundamentally different. Which is a shame as this show is about 15 years old and there still doesn't seem to be too many like it.

The anime is good i love the power system my problem is that mc's dub voice is annoying and hes too much of a nice person i prefer mc's who are good hearted but smart and a little selfish the animation is good i like how cozy it feels as you're watching it, you might feel nostalgai from watching this anime because it has alot of simalarties to og shounen the plot is good i like tournement's in anime the side characters are forgetable though, i think alot of people will like this series for the simple yet intresting powersystem and the main villan, ... the show is a entertaining watch because it does have a little plot twist that i wont spoil , last thing i want to say is if you like fightiscenes youll defenitly love this anime