Back to Malfegor's Profile Malfegor's Profile

went in fully expecting to like this more on rewatch, but honestly think i like it a little less.

the visuals are obviously the star of the show and worth the price of admission alone. maybe the most ambitious art-style ever put to tv anime and executed with perfect consistency.
it almost feels like every color and shape ever conceived are on the screen at all times and yet every arc has it's own unique look.

but, on some level, the art-style also works against the atmosphere of the show. it simply looks too bright and detached from any realism for a true feeling of ... tension or dread to ever build in me.

can't deny that the show felt like a bit of a chore to get through.
can't exactly pinpoint why. i'm not really usually bothered by slow pacing either.
i guess some arcs simply restate information way too much (how often did we need to see the "get me more sake" scene, followed by the wife staring out the window, in the Nopperabou arc? five, six times? it felt like a million) or otherwise take too long to get to the point, after you've already figured it out.

regardless, it's still a good enough show that i watched it twice all the way through and clearly i'm the odd one out thinking it's only "good", so whatever, watch it.
also, Medicine Seller big sexy.

I have no way of actually confirming, but this nigh-misantrophic anime feels a lot more accurate to what the samurai were probably actually like, compared to any more heroic depictions.
a hypermasculine cabal, high off authority, practicing nothing but worship of rigid power structures and the art of killing? yea, no way that wasn't a hotbed for corruption and depravity.
enjoy the not-so-subtle symbolism behind the school of samurai in this show being singularly devoted to a cruel elderly man, entirely succumbed to dementia, who only snaps into lucidity to commit acts of violence.

perhaps this is even the one actually great "horror" anime.
very slow paced and minimally ... animated, but incredibly dense on unnerving atmosphere, with occasional bursts of the grisliest, realistic violence ever put to animation.
Hiroshi Hamasaki's off-kilter direction and the amazing minimalistic soundtrack, full of ominous chanting and percussion, take center stage and achieve an outright hypnotic effect.
the show is the platonic ideal of a great, albeit incomplete, anime adaption - accurate to the source material, but with enough of a unique identity to warrant it's own existence.

Venus Wars plays a little bit like the abbreviated version of a slightly longer story and while it definitely could flesh out some of the side characters more (Miranda is too cool to not do that much), it is nowhere near the ridiculous level of highlight-reel-pacing of your average anime compilation movie.
It concerns itself with the (very common in 80s sci-fi anime) theme of war and points at how silly large scale human conflict and nationalism is by changing the location from Earth and asking the question "why would a relatively young space colony on Venus go to war with itself?"
well, that's just ... what we do isn't it?

regardless, the real star of the show here is obviously the visuals.
this movie is only a hair below, if not on the same high level as, Akira in that regard.
gorgeously detailed, if grim, background art, a ridiculous amount of background animation, complex mechanical designs moving consistently smoothly and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's famously cool character designs kept my eyes glued to the screen for the entire runtime.
if you ever wondered "what would it be like if all those 80s sci-fi anime could look as good as their Openings do the entire time?", this is your answer.

"If you are in a position to act, it would be a sin not to, even if you had nothing to gain from doing so."

Here we have a Production IG fantasy series, directed and written by Kenji Kamiyama, who has previously worked on Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which just so happens to be possibly my favorite anime series ever, and all of it based on a successful novel series. All of that already sounds hella promising. Here’s my review explaining why I think this series is good stuff and deserves more recognition.

Story:
Seirei no Moribito is the story of Balsa, ... bodyguard, skilled spear-fighter and total dreamboat, who is tasked by a Queen with the protection of her son prince Chagum who has a dangerous supernatural entity living inside of him and is being pursued by the assassins of his own father, the king, or the Mikado in this case. All of this is set in the fantasy land of faux-Asia, which is close enough to the real world to be vaguely familiar, but just different enough to be its own interesting fantasy land.
This initial set-up serves as the first act of the story, which has us following Balsa as she outmaneuvers the king’s forces both by using her wits and her incredible fighting ability. All of this is fairly exciting with satisfying amounts of action and is an excellent introduction to Balsa and the large cast of side-characters.
After this cat-and-mouse game, the pacing of the show slows down considerably in the second act and the entire series switches into an almost slice-of-life fantasy series with a semi-episodic presentation, which are used to further develop Chagum’s character, his relationship with Balsa and her allies and some world-building. It is this switch in pacing between the two acts that may come across as jarring to some viewers. Personally, I was surprised by it, but it didn't bother me a lot. Even with a lack of action, it’s still very much worth watching and seeing the characters grow and live together.
Once the series closes into its finale it all moves along a bit faster and the scale grows more epic again. Overall, the story behind Moribito might not be the most original one and the switches in pacing may throw off some, but I still found it to be executed quite well. It takes it’s time to properly develop the main cast, has some interesting twists along the line, is exciting when it needs to be and hell, it even manages to make flashbacks interesting.

World building:
I have a special little boner in my heart for some good, detailed world building and Moribito delivers in that regard, which is why I will make this short section to comment on it.
Moribito has its own version of everything from funeral ceremonies, regional superstitions over smaller gadgets, mechanisms and weapons to wildlife. There is a lot of attention to detail here, but the thing that really makes it shine is the completely seamless and natural integration into the series. The world in Seirei no Moribito really feels coherent, alive and like it’s been around long before the main plot of the series started.

Characters:
Okay, let me first heap some praise on Balsa, who is exactly the type of female main characters I’d like to see more often in my chinese cartoons. She competent, confident, intelligent, mature and I totally don’t have a crush on her. She’s also 29 years old at the beginning of the series. If any of you reading this know more anime with close-to-30 female leads, feel free to recommend them to me. You may keep all the lolis, moeblobs and tsunderes. Seriously though, the best thing about Balsa is how, despite the fact that she always has a plan for everything and is a capable enough spear fighter to hold her own against four elite soldiers, she never comes across as mary-sue-ish. This is a very delicate balance to hold for a main character, yet this series makes it look effortless. Aside from being excellent at her job as badass bodyguard, Balsa also has a softer side, which is evident by her interactions with Chagum and other allies. As the series progresses she becomes more and more of a mother figure to Chagum.
Chagum himself deserves a lot of praise for being a child character amongst a mostly adult cast, who despite his age and status never comes across as annoying or spoiled. The prince is intelligent, polite and willing to learn about the ways of the common people, despite being holed up in a palace for his entire life prior to the events of the series. The entire series I was expecting him to do something stupid or act spoiled and it never happened. So congratulations Seirei no Moribito, you managed to make me like a child character. Both Balsa and Chagum are the focus of the series and are developed extremely well.
It’s the secondary cast that could’ve used a bit more time in the limelight. While absolutely no one in the shows sizable cast is completely unlikable, which is an impressive feat in and of itself, I wouldn't have minded for the side characters to get some more attention, but that’s only a minor gripe in an otherwise fantastic show.
Also notable is how this series doesn't seem to have a clear villain, the antagonists are mostly just misguided or misinformed. Even the supernatural ones aren't evil so much as they are simply following their nature. A surprising amount of conflict in the series gets resolved by characters simply talking to each other and explaining their situation rather than through fighting, which is certainly a breath of fresh air and a mature way to resolve conflict (don’t worry, there are still cool fights in there).
Oh yeah, special shout-out to the character Torogai, who is one badass old granny that doesn't take shit from anyone. Welp, I guess this series made me like a granny character too, so there you go.

Animation:
All you really need to know about Seirei no Moribito’s visuals is that it’s Production IG at its best. Kenji Kamiyama’s signature realistic artstyle is one I really enjoy, the backgrounds are stunningly beautiful, the color palette is vibrant and it’s all held together by good cinematography.
A special mention goes to the fight scenes, which are almost movie budget-smooth and have incredibly satisfying to watch choreography. Also, all the outfits the characters wear are really well-designed without being overblown or unrealistic. I especially like the ones worn by the hunters which initially pursue Balsa and Chagum.
As for negative aspects of the visuals, there is the cg, which admittedly is still better justified/used more tastefully than in most more recent shows. It’s occasionally utilized to animate part of a crowd and in those cases it’s barely noticeable, but towards the very end of the series they use cg to animate a certain group of monsters and it doesn't look great unfortunately. It’s particularly bothersome cause the monsters are actually hand-drawn in other scenes and look great there.
Overall however, the show has excellent visuals, and aside from the occasional cg, is about as good as an anime show can look with a tv budget.

Sound:
Man, composer Kenji Kawai really outdid himself with this soundtrack. And that guy is already a well-known, incredibly competent composer, so that’s saying something. The background music does such an excellent job of enhancing every scene, no matter if it needs to be sad and emotional, creepy or fast paced for an action scene. It’s tasteful and fits perfectly and that’s all a good soundtrack needs to be. In fact, I’m listening to it as I’m writing this review and probably will for a while after I’m done.
It’s a shame the Op and Ed can’t live up to this. The opening is a rather cheesy pop/rock song, which L'Arc-en-Ciel fans will undoubtedly enjoy, but simply isn’t my thing nor do I think it fits the series very well. The ending is better, but not remarkable either.
As for the voice acting everyone on the cast does a good job bringing their characters to life, especially Balsa’s voice actor, who has a nice deep female voice that fits the character perfectly.
Of special note is the fact that Chagum was actually voiced by a young boy, instead of a woman, as is usually the case for young male characters in anime. This lends some really nice authenticity to the character.

Overall:
Seirei no Moribito is an excellent series with only a couple of minor shortcomings, which thankfully don’t sour the experience much at all.
If you want a classy, good fantasy anime that has all the feel of an old historical saga and you don’t mind a bit of slower pacing, then please do yourself a favor and give this often overlooked series a watch.

As usual, thank you for taking the time to read this review, please excuse any grammatical mistakes as English is not my first language and please feel free to leave me some feedback, as I want to improve.

I'm usually not a huge fan of writing really short reviews, but it's so damn easy to summarize this series in just a few sentences:

There's too much plot for it to be a pure hentai, but too little plot for a proper supernatural action series.

To call the characters one dimensional would be an insult to straight lines.

Every single bit of time that could have been spent on plot or characters is instead wasted on rapey sex-scenes.
You can almost set yourself a timer for when a sex-scene will occur (tip: it's all the fucking time, usually for no reason).
I can almost hear the guys ... in the studio animating this going "Oh shit, no one fucked for like a minute and half, can't have that"

It's a shame too, this could have been a Devilman-styled demon-centric action/horror show. Instead it's just ... nothing really.


Overall:
If all you want is to watch a bunch of, admittedly reasonably well-drawn, girls get raped by demon tentacle-dicks and then get blown to gory bits afterwards, this is the show for you.
If not, steer clear of this mess.

Notes
-I haven’t read the manga.
-I watched the uncensored release of the anime.

Terraformars, an anime about a bunch of genetically modified humans with animal powers that get sent to Mars to exterminate a race of hyper evolved humanoid cockroaches called Johj. Sounds radical, right? Unfortunately it isn’t and here i’ll explain why.

Story:
Really, there’s not a whole lot to talk about in terms of story. The entire plot is just an excuse to get the characters to Mars as quickly as possible and make them fight a whole lot and i suppose it does achieve that just fine.
The main problem with the storytelling in Terraformars is ... the pacing.
For a series that prides itself on being nothing but dumb action and violent fights, it’s actually painfully slow. We get shots that linger forever for no good reason, characters standing around doing and saying nothing for extended periods of time, tons of narrator delivered exposition and a ludicrous amount of flashbacks that sometimes take up the entire duration of an episode, while not really adding anything substantial. The best moments of the show are when it throws away any pretense of storytelling and just goes into full-on hot-blooded action-mode. Unfortunately these moments are rarer than you might assume and usually over quite quickly.
Special shout-out to the shitty worldbuilding of this series.
Terraformars is apparently set 600 years in the future, yet aside from space travel, genetic manipulation and terraforming i guess, no technological advancements were made by the human race. The people back on earth still drive the same cars, dress in the same clothes and use the same fucking smartphones as we do today. Why even set the series this far in the future, if you’re not gonna use it for some interesting worldbuilding?
The lightning fast evolution of the humanoid cockroaches is ridiculous anyway, may as well have set it fifty years in the future and not expose your complete lack of imagination.
Oh yeah, there’s also some government conspiracy subplot, but no one cares.
The series doesnt’t even have any conclusion at all, it’s set up for a sequel that will undoubtedly happen considering the popularity of it’s manga counterpart.

Characters:
The characters of Terraformars are about as boring and one dimensional as they come. The series utilizes constant long-ass flashbacks with sappy background stories to flesh out the characters, but it never works out, the characters remain uninteresting and all the flashbacks achieve is to kill any feeling of momentum this action series might have had.
I shit you not, there’s one character whose entire backstory involves people in his life telling him what a boring person he is.
However, this fleshing out only applies to a handful of the surprisingly large cast of Terraformars. The rest? Nameless cannon fodder that is absolutely and utterly useless and usually spend their time sitting around waiting to be killed.
Also, holy fuck Terraformars, your only important German character is named Adolf, are you fucking shitting me? Would it have killed the writers to spend five seconds to google more appropriate German names?

Sound:
The OP is a generic fast paced buttrock track and it’s just kinda eh, but i can’t shake the feeling that it doesn’t really fit the series. I suppose i expected something a bit darker and more atmospheric.
The ED i don‘t even really remember to be honest, the music of the series in general is fairly forgettable.
As far as voice acting goes, it’s all fitting for the characters, but no one in the cast really delivers a standout performance.

Visuals:
The character designs are one of the few things in Terraformars i can praise. As someone who appreciates semi realistic human designs in anime, this stuff is right up my alleyway. The animal transformations of the humans also look pretty cool.
The same thing can’t be said of the primary antagonists of the series, unfortunately. The designs of the humanoid cockroaches or Johj have gained some notoriety for being 'racist', as they look almost like caricatures of large muscular black guys. I looked into it and apparently they are based on the homo erectus and not black people.
Looking at it that way, the design makes some sense, but is still not a great choice, as the Johj look silly and not particularly threatening. I feel like this is a wasted opportunity, the creators of the series could have created something truly horrifying, considering the creatures are based on fucking cockroaches of all things. The Johj could have been some serious nightmare fuel, instead they are silly cavemen.
Animation in the series is fine when it counts, the fight scenes namely. It’s fairly consistent and the battles feel impactful, violent and on occasion even well choreographed. Too bad the color palette is so ugly, as all the colors in Terraformars look washed out and muddy.
I suppose this was to give the series a darker and gritty look, but it ends up just being unappealing.
There’s also this distracting noise filter that they kept using seemingly at random. What was the point of that? It just made the already so-so visuals of the series look shittier whenever it was active.

Enjoyment:
I’m not gonna lie, as much as i shit on this series, there were some pretty kickass moments hidden in there, namely whenever the action was in full effect, but they are few and far between and get marred by all the problems plagueing this series. If nothing else, at least Terraformars is not particularly long and won’t waste a whole lot of your time.
And this may sound unbelievable, but the educational value of Terraformars is actually surprisingly high (that is, more than nothing). You will pick up a lot of weird animal facts in this series, so there’s that.

Overall:
Terraformars is a series with a whole buttload of problems. Even if you are looking for a short, violent, action series, which is exactly what Terraformars is, there’s a lot of better stuff out there that you should check out instead.
I give it a final rating of 3/10.

As always, please excuse any grammatical mistakes, as English is not my first language. And please feel free to leave me some feedback, i really want to improve.

Ah, Giganto Makhia. Kentaro Miura's first original work in over two decades and ultimate proof that he did not spend his year of Berserk hiatus just lazing around, like so many people seem to accuse him of. The man obviously needed a creative break and created this very short seven chapter manga in the meantime. And you know what? Did a damn fine job with it, too.

Story - 8
Giganto Makhia is a science fiction story set a hundred million years in the future, though to be honest it feels more like a fantasy story, as you wont find any advanced technology or other elements that ... would make it feel more sci-fi here.
The plot follows the two main characters Delos and Prome as they wander through a desert and eventually end up in a village of 'bug people'.
I cant really talk too much about the plot, as it so short, that any more details beyond this basic set-up might be considered spoiler.
Considering how short this manga is, the story does a pretty great job at introducing the main characters, setting up the world and some major factions
and having spot on pacing. The only negative i can think of is, again, the short length and the limitations that come with it, but the fact that i want to see more of this world means the plot did its job quite well.

Characters - 8
The manga focuses mainly on the two main characters Prome, a girl with magic powers, and Delos, a wrestler hired by Prome for an unknown purpose that becomes clearer as the story goes on.
Aside from the two mains, only one side character, another pugilist Delos fights, gets some attention.
Time constraints, once again, limit the character department from developing its full potential, though thankfully the important characters are all almost instantly likable.
Delos is kindhearted, but fierce and calculating once engaged in combat, Prome on the other side is a prime example of how to do a deadpan, mostly emotionless character and not make them boring and unlikable. They have great chemistry together and their interactions are one of the best things about the entire manga.

Art - 10
Kentaro Miura is one of the finest artists working in this medium, period. The art in Giganto Makhia is downright perfect with high levels of detail, creative character and creature designs, fantastic action choreography and an amazing sense of scale when necessary. Its goddamn flawless, i aint got much more to add.

Enjoyment - 8
This is a fantastic little manga and a very fun read, its only drawback being that it feels more like an introduction to a much larger series than a standalone story. Now, as a side note, Miura did say that he would like to continue it at some point, which i personally would love to see, but with his commitments to the Berserk series i doubt this will happen anytime soon (or ever). One can still hope tho, dare i say i almost wish for a another Berserk hiatus so he can squeeze some GM in his work schedule? ... No. No, i shouldnt say that and i wouldnt want that to happen, but you get my point, right? Good manga, good stuff, i dig it, thumbs up. Please dont crucify me for that hiatus joke!

Overall - 8
Recommended for people who like fantasy, action, good art, Kentaro Miura, sick wrestling moves or to those who would like to read an entire manga series while waiting at the dentists office.

I dont really understand why i picked Highschool of the Dead: Drifters of the Dead as my first anime to review. Its probably because i watched all of HotD in one sitting and my brain isnt functioning properly anymore. Bear with me.
Drifters of the Dead is basically the studio behind the most titillating non-hentai-anime in recent memory going 'maybe we didnt deliver enough on the boobs?'
(they did)
And then they made a beach episode.
So we can have even less plot and even more fanservice than in the regular series. Sure, why not.

Story - 2
Does this OVA continue the open ended story of ... the series? Nope.
Is it relevant to the plot ? Nah.
Is it worth watching at all? Well, its only sixteen minutes long, so you may as well.
Its all lighthearted and there are some jokes, but i feel as if the 'secluded island+zombies' setup coudve been used for something cool and it wasnt. Actually, there are no zombies anywhere in this episode, except for a very short scene in the end where they are used for a somewhat unsettling joke.

Characters - 3
The characters are as stereotypical as ever and of course there is no character developement at all, but hey, at least you might get a kick out of it if shipping Komuro and Busujima is really important to you for whatever reason.

Art - 7
Its all pretty solid. The colors pop nicely and the general artstyle is clean and nice to look at. Of course it doesnt have some of the impressively animated action scenes of the regular series, but otherwise there isnt much to complain about. Also, boobs.

Sound - 6
The OP is still pretty good and the voice actors do a solid job. Not much to say really.

Enjoyment - 5
Its just about the right length for a short wank. And there are some mildly funny scenes.

Overall - 4
Watch it if you like the regular series or anime boobs or if you are really really bored.

lol Necrophilia.