I've posted a review on Bartender. Votes (especially positive ones ;) ) and comments are welcome.
Children have no place in a bar, and most youths prefer dancing in nightclubs to loud music and cheap booze... but for those who wish a calmer and more mature place, there is the bar.
Even among bars, there is a variety of styles: from seedy dockside dives, to beer halls where there is always a ball game or race being played on a large screen, to the dimly-lit classier cocktail bars...
What, then, is a bar? A place where they serve drinks, sure, but that's just an element of the whole.
A bar is a social environment safe from the rest of the world where one goes to throw off the worries for a while; the drinks are just aids to relax and let go of tension and inhibitions. If it is a good bar, it's a place one regrets leaving even to go back home.
In Bartender, we are welcomed with a warm smile to the Eden Hall, a small but cosy cocktail bar. The bartender himself is a confident and therapist to the regulars, well known for his near-magical ability to serve just the right drink to soothe each customer's soul from their problems. Go talk to him for a while, then ask him to surprise you - he'll deftly squeeze, blend, shake and mix the contents of a few bottles while sharing bits of trivia about the different ingredients.
You might eventually realize that he's adding more than spirits into the cocktail, he's also mixing in tales, history, metaphors and emotions... that what he's making isn't simply a drink, but a customized healing potion to which the liquid in the glass is itself only a minor part.
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Essence:
Story & direction: 9.
Bartender is a niche experimental anime, episodic, and although the introduced characters become regulars and appear or even participate in subsequent episodes, in general each episode is dedicated to a patron and his problems.
Instead of following a formal plot, it depends on realistically fleshed-out characters and an excellent direction using advanced techniques such as multilayer superimpositions, juxtapositions, camera angles, flashbacks, using characters as mouthpieces for a omniscient narrative, and seamlessly intermeshing the episode's theme with documentary elements. While the latter are fundamental for understanding the characters' thought processes, they sometimes distract from the main theme, which is why I didn't give a full 10 to this section.
Characters: 10
As said before, the characters are realistic and well fleshed out. Sure, we mostly only see what they allow through the metaphorical public masks everybody uses or the tidbits we get from third parties, but isn't this also part of the realism?
Even the bartender himself, who keeps his professional face throughout the series, gets a significant bit of his past explored by the regular patrons' chatting and rumoring, bringing him down from the near-deity status his current abilities grant him and back to the human realm.
The one time this realism was broken was when a character behaved irrationally in an emergency, for the sake of setting up the stage for an episode - but the outcome was so satisfactory that I'm unwilling to penalize the series for it.
Enjoyment: 10
This is a hit-or-miss series that should be avoided by anybody who either dislikes bars or slow, talky shows; it also requires a modicum of maturity to enjoy properly. If this is not your case, avoid it altogether.
Even then, as with alcoholic drinks, it should be taken with moderation. The best way to enjoy it is one or two episodes at a time, in a dimmed room, and with your favorite drink at hand.
Cheers! http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj47/Maegil/Cheers.jpg
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Existence:
Art & animation: 8
The art is very good; the bar was created with loving detail, with shadows, reflections and detailed settings. The characters are competently drawn, with a wealth of adequately used facial expressions.
There's not much happening throughout the episodes, most of the time it's just talking heads - the most fluid animation happens during the preparation of the cocktails; still, the characters smile, frown, gesture, grimace - and blink! - while in the background there's the occasional patron going to the toilets, blowing smoke or adjusting his chair.
There is the CG that, given its age, is far from photographic; still, it is pretty much limited to the flow of liquids and the sparkle of bubbles in tall glasses, and doesn't interfere in the enjoyment.
Sound: 9
The OP is a nice duet between a female patron and the bartender; it is, however, too upbeat for such slow and intimate series. The ED is a delicious jazz song, played while a real barman prepares and serves us the cocktail featured in the episode... Not once did I feel the urge to skip it, instead I wanted to pick up the glass and sip it.
The rest of the music is ambient soft jazz, jamming in harmony to the scenes and accompanying the mood without ever overwhelming - which, for such a series, is just perfect.
The background sounds are what one should expect from a small bar: glasses and bottles clinking or tapping on the table, chairs dragging, and the such - nothing spectacular, since anything more would actually detract from the experience.
My favorite genres: good Quality, better Quality, best Quality, Über-Quality.
Scoring criteria: Existence does not precede Essence.
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