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Every now and then you come across an anime with all the right tools for success but ends up having to fight an uphill battle against unfortunate surrounding factors. Take a manga that's nowhere near complete, hand it off to a studio with an unimpressive track record, and what do you get? Well, honestly now that I think about it, a lot of adaptations of manga/LNs/VNs fit this criterion, but today I'll be highlighting yet another unfortunate case in Pandora Hearts. An anime with a compelling backdrop but not a clue as to how to handle it in the long run. Whilst the show may ... have come out half-baked, I'd be remiss to leave out mention of its solid foundation

The world Pandora Hearts presents within its 25 episode run is one that makes no qualms in making parallels with Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland primarily. It plays with various concepts and names from famous fairy tales and ghost stories as well. The story of Pandora Hearts is an interesting attempt at mixing of fantasy, action, horror, mystery, and comedy.The plot unfurls a tale spanning a century revolving around an event known as "Tragedy of Sabrie". More often than not, plot advancement comes from looking back at these events and seeing what each shocking revelation does to each character and their resolve to move forward. That said as far as titles labeled the "shounen" tag go, Pandora Hearts is rather slow and it's very obvious that providing exhilarating action is not top priority here. After a while, it becomes clear the story prefers to flesh out elements of the setting and the central mystery as opposed to providing fight scenes in each episode.

The slow pace isn't something I'd wholly chalk up to the lack of immediately epic plotting however and that's where on of the major failings of the plot lies. Most of the show's major revelations are shoved into 1-2 episode events that are sandwiched between....not really all that much. There're some pretty lengthy stretches here in there that ended up being filled with very trite, very anime-typical comedy which did nothing for me. Comedic timing is also a foreign concept to Pandora Hearts for the most part as the characters often make random "funny" quips during otherwise serious dialogue exchanges. The meat can be pretty delicious here, but there's way too much fat I found unpalatable. This problem also makes it so that the plot-twists are unevenly spaced out. You get a collection of perspective-changing developments in one episode, none for a fair stretch of time, and then yet another cluster of twists. Episodes 21 and 22, in particular, end up being rather dizzying as a result of this. An unfortunate side-effect of the plot developments in Pandora Hearts is that they give rise to many, many questions and character arcs that no series of just 25 episodes is capable of handling properly. Being an adaptation of an incomplete monthly series that presumably didn't sell well enough to warrant a second, this was to be expected. What can't be excused, however, is how poorly thought out final episodes were. The anime sticks with the storyline of its parent manga with blind faith until the last three episodes come along and it becomes clear that the story is nowhere near a satisfying stopping point. This, of course, resulted in the anime attempting to create its own ending and it completely betrays the efforts the show had put into all of it's interesting variables by barely addressing any of them. I'm not really a manga purist, so I say that script-writers should feel free to inject their own ideas into an adaptation though they should do it under one of 2 conditions.

1. Make it their own pet-project of sorts early on. This is undoubtedly very difficult to do as it means not only making a different ending but giving the story a different narrative purpose. Go out on a limb and change not just the ending, but the entire 2nd half or something. Make it so it has a different set of ideas or themes as well so that the adaptation can be viewed as its own thing that can even be preferred over the source rather than just a shittier version of the source with a conclusion that seems to have been cobbled together at the last minute. Examples: Fullmetal Alchemist, Bokurano, Planetes, and Gankutsuou

Or....

2. Make sure that the added content doesn't conflict with conflict with the main canon so as to effectively close off all hope for a sequel. Example: Noragami and the 1st season of Knights of Sidonia, which both ended with climaxes that weren't in the original manga nor did they make it impossible for a sequel to happen without major retcons.

Pandora Hearts opts for neither of these options and goes for an ending that not only plays around with the established canon but is also inconclusive. For those of you who've seen Claymore, think of that title's finale, but with even more unanswered questions and a much more rushed anticlimax (yes it's that lame).

As far as the actual cast goes. they do manage to get fleshed out to a remarkable degree. For the most part, however, the series banks on the character arc of Oz Vessalius (the protagonist) to a point at which actually becomes a bit of a detriment. The writers seem to have a hard-on for exploiting his emotional trauma for all it's worth. And for what? To have Oz angst and fret, and then eventually man up a little and say that he'll make a change for the better. Doesn't sound too bad right? Well, the thing is his development is cyclical, as in it resets from time to time. We see him fluctuate from emotional highs to lows several times over in the same way and it ends up becoming a tad repetitious. That said he's far from what I'd call a bad character exactly. The characters Oz meets on his journey never encourage him to develop into an unstoppable badass (he's actually quite weak physically throughout) so much as they challenge his value system. He eventually realizes the problems that lie with his childish heroics. It's a shame that his more introspective moments of sadness were far too numerous and lengthy for the simple points they got across.

The rest of the cast, in particular, do develop a fair bit in the present, but I'd be lying If I said it wasn't more interesting to see how they ended up becoming who they are. I'm not normally a fan of using flashbacks excessively, but given how all the important clues to the central mystery lie in the past, I can allow Pandora Hearts some lee-way. There really isn't any going further without taking a good long look back. Because of this, I can't say the characters "develop" as much as you might like to hear that, but the main cast (Oz, Alice, Gilbert, and Break) is made up of individuals that you can fully understand and sympathize with. Alice, herself is a pretty simple tsundere type through and through though unlike others of her type she doesn't really exude arrogance to mask weakness as she's strong as hell. Her simplistic nature and arrogance come from the fact that she lacks her memory of the traumatic events of a time long before her meeting with Oz. Not the most original character, but as an epicenter to the grand mystery she doesn't detract much from the series. There really isn't all that much to say about the characters besides looking at how they are built up, because it's actually difficult to talk about them without spoiling key plot twists (and trust me there are a lot of key plot-twists) once we finally have a strong grasp on the main players, the show comes to it's abrupt ending.

Visually, there's no escaping the fact that the series doesn't really deliver. Sure the series has neat set-pieces, but excessively drab, dark and grainy color palette doesn't do them much favor. There's also this odd, blurry filter blurs the outlines of objects in the foreground that I found distracting. The fight scenes are also not up to par as they lack inspired choreography tactics and overall direction. Audio-wise, Pandora Hearts holds up just fine. Whilst not the best I've heard of her work, Yuki Kajiura's score does a fine job of picking up some of the slack during the slower moments and mediocre fight scenes. This track in particular that's used whenever Alice is going all out against a foe is typically better then everything happening onscreen. Kajiura's tendency towards pieces with moody melancholic chants fits a morose title like this one to a tee.

It's a shame that with as much momentum Pandora Hearts was gaining that it had to succumb not only to its own shortcomings but to the same fate as many adaptations of many monthly manga before it. As it is, watching Pandora Hearts is akin to piecing together a vast jigsaw puzzle, only to discover that half the pieces are missing towards the end. There's not much waiting at the end of this rabbit hole.

Some horror flicks manage to work because of good pacing, unique presentation, and a genuinely unnerving atmosphere, others are just entertaining gorefests that make up for there weak writing and stupid characters with a healthy dosage camp. I genuinely enjoy both sides of the horror spectrum and came into Another looking for one or the other and instead got what seems to be a horrendously botched attempt at both. As far as being creepy goes, Another employs the most ridiculously derivative approach. A small pale chick and ugly dolls? It’s about as done to death as it sounds . Plainly put, the series puts a ... pitiful amount effort into establishing a legitimately creepy atmosphere using such cliche imagery isn’t gonna put my hairs on end. The ominous music does it’s best to compliment these scenes, but it ends up being overused and doesn’t do much to elevate such weak material.

OK, so Another clearly isn’t very successful when it comes to being unnerving, but there’s still the “other” type of horror I already brought up right? Well the death scenes are ridiculous, but Another otherwise lacks a fun sense of self-awareness. Any fun to be had in this show is reduced to simply laughing at an absurd death scene before the series try to make you take it’s plot and characters seriously once again. I could forgive botched attempts at spookiness and some death scenes too silly and jarring to take seriously, but the underlying writing is so unrelentingly bad it’s unbelievable. The mystery in Another in simple terms makes no sense whatsoever. All the reveals regarding the calamity of Class 3-3 have to do with either how it happens and what the rules are. There’s never any explanation as to why it happens. It’s just a bunch of rules applied to some class with no rhyme or reason. The idea behind the show was bad, but what ruined the show was excruciatingly terrible pacing. For starters, after the 1st couple of episodes, the show pretty much front-loads the viewers with most of the information through forced info-dumps, which is boring as hell to watch and doesn’t really give you much to think about besides the mystery behind who the killer is. You know exactly what’s going on for most of the show (minus who’s causing it all) which guts the tension quickly.

A lot of the problems with the plot could’ve been mitigated if the series wasn’t driven by a cast with perhaps one of the worst case of plot convenience and plot-induced-stupidity I’ve ever seen in quite some time. This is where the characters come in unfortunately, whose actions seem to lack any semblance of logic whenever the script demands so. It’s the type of stupidity that creates plot craters as opposed to holes. Why doesn’t anyone try to do something about a curse for 30 years? Why doesn’t anyone try to transfer out of a cursed class? Surely you’d consider at least that much before trying to murder your fellow classmates right? The writing goes far enough to avoid aspects of the world that ought to get involved in the annual massacre of children (like parents, the police, etc) to the point where the school may as well have been teleported to a remote island. The worst part of it all was the reason they gave for why Mei doesn’t just tell Koichi the identity the real undead person, it’s an insultingly stupid handwave that essentially causes the show to be four times longer than it needed to be while making most of the deaths entirely preventable.

Koichi himself as a character isn’t stupid like the rest of the cast, but that’s really all I have to say about him. He’s essentially a blank slate ” hey project yourself on to me” type of character. This sort of lead works OK for video games (though even then I’d prefer not to have to put up with it), this degree of blandness is sleep inducing. They don’t even really give him much to do besides talk, and talk, and talk, and hey that person just died, back to talking. There’s not really much to say about the rest of the cast as individuals, but as a whole, they came off to me as nothing more than l mere death fodder whose names I never bothered learning or forgot after/during my watch-through of this series. Anyone who tries to drop information the writers deem to be to juicy to give up at the moment either do so by dropping very vague hints that you’d have to rewatch the show to catch (fat chance of me doing that), or something ridiculously contrived and inconvenient happens to stop right exact moment where a truth bomb is about to be dropped. There was also a hint of romance between the two leads, but the writers barely gave it any attention, as will this review.

There’s nothing to recommend about Another. As a serious mystery, it’s far too dumb and not in a way that would make it fun to sit through.

If you were to ask me to fit Brigadoon: Marin and Melan into one dominant category, I would honestly be at a loss. This is a series that doesn’t tie itself down to any specific genre, Brigadoon instead opts to include a wide variety of elements into its grand stirring pot. You want series mech (or very mech-like) battles? Heartwarming family drama? A world endangering conspiracy? Goofy comedy? Yuri undertones? Dark psychological drama? Brigadoon brings all of these ingredients together. This type of blend will likely prove off putting to those who aren’t a fan of one or more of the aforementioned areas, an will ... probably end up too jarring for some folks to get into. Even then there can be little doubt that once the wheels of the plot start spinning, that Brigadoon is at the very least a highly imaginative title.

The storytelling of present here isn’t something that can be judged based off of the first couple of episodes. While the monster of the week format persists throughout the 1st half, there are other serious elements at play here. What sets Brigadoon’s earlier episodes apart from other proxy battle titles are the actual repercussions that come with a child summoning a monster to combat other monsters. Lives are damaged/destroyed, thus people grow fearful and act on their fear. This is where the more tragic elements come in to play as not only does Marin become a pariah in the eyes of her peers, she is also targeted by the police as well for being at the centre of all the madness she never asked for. This is a series that won’t pull it’s punches and knows how to use shock factor as a means of getting points across.


Once the 2nd half hits, Brigadoon plunges head first into its own strange mythos and slowly reveals elements, those that are both entirely new and those foreshadowed earlier on. The story picks up a greater sense of urgency as well, as its plot-twists suggest that there is more at stake than just the lives of Marin and Melan. Although there are many elements at play within the setting of Brigadoon, some of the more vital ones do not receive much attention and feel pulled out of thin air with last minute explanations during the last episode. Another somewhat annoying trait this series adopts is use of cliffhangers sometimes. Very rarely will there be a cliffhanger that isn’t resolved via disappointingly simple means. It’s these somewhat cheap tricks that put a damper on what is otherwise a rewarding experience.

The true heart of Brigadoon lies in the intriguingly handled relationship between Marin and her alien guardian Melan. It develops from protector/protected, to father/daughter, and finally to the kind of relationship that should by all accounts feel wrong. The progression of their love feels gradual and given their extreme reliance on each other, the destination feels justified. The actual ending as a result gave me what as the “feels” even though the path to that ending came about could have gone smoother, as I’ve already mentioned. The wrapping up of their character arcs as a result feels cathartic enough to bring one to tears. Helping Marin get through her hardships is her makeshift extended family. Their personalities often rely on one-note gags, but the levity they offer is welcome in the face of the looming despair hanging over the story.

Brigadoon’s aesthetic, while dated visually, evokes a feeling of uniqueness not unlike the story itself. Although the visuals are by no means amazing, the overall cartoony style gives the show its own look. The series is set in 1969 and it certainly shows since special attention is given to make the locations give off that kind of vibe. Though the fight scenes are fluid enough, still, the OST is much more remarkable. “Kaze no Ao, Umi no Midori” by Ikuko is a damn good opener with an appropriately sorrowful feel to it. The rest of the track is diverse enough to accommodate for the range of tones that series employs. My only gripe lies with the ending theme, which on its own is pretty decent, cutesy stuff. However when an episode ends with a serious cliffhanger, it only serves to damage the mood with its cheery tune. It’s better to just not watch it once the second half hits.

It’s to easy see why Brigadoon: Marin and Melan incapable of achieving any more then cult status. I believe that the quirky look may have given off the wrong message to many anime watchers as to what this series is all about. It’s a “something for everyone” sort of show to the point where it ends up being an acquired taste, if that makes any sense. Perhaps the best recommendation I can make for this series is that you should watch it if you’re the sort of person who can live with having their emotions jerked about. If so then prepare for a game of Genre Roulette the likes of which you may never see replicated to this success.

[C] The Money of Soul and Possibility Control has a pretty original hook: It's a story starring economics college-student Yoga Kimimaro who only wants to acquire a job with income stable enough to support a family. One day he meets some eccentric dude named Masakaki (who looks a fusion between Willy Wonka and the Cheshire Cat) who offers him a large sum of money, asking in return that he put up his future for "collateral". From that day forward, Yoga is transported to a realm known as the Financial District where he must engage in battles known as "deals" in which he must offer not ... only his money, but his future as well. It doesn't just stop there since the money printed in the Financial District is different then your average bills. "Midas money" as it's called not only has adverse side-effects on the economy, but on the fabrics of reality as well

If there's anything [C] does that's remarkable, it's that the series tackles issues you never see tackled and gets off to fairly strong start because of it. The idea of a financial crisis being the core conflict in a series sounds pretty cool. The main character is pretty easy to relate to (college student with money issues), the Financial District looks pretty neat, and Masakaki is awesome. Why did it all have to go so wrong?

Let's start with the battles. To expand further on the above synopsis, people who engage in deals within the financial district are known as entres (short for entrepreneurs), and they are given ass kicking super-powered sidekicks called assets to do most of the fighting for them. The creators try to make these showdowns seem complicated by giving them a ton of rules and financial terminology that imply depth, but the way the battles are actually executed resembles pretty much every proxy battle series out there. They are often rather short and resort to run-of-the-mill beam-spam where characters yell out the name of their attacks before firing in true Digimon fashion. Strategies are limited to mostly deus-ex machina and straight-up luck, so don't come in to expecting any sort of complex mind-games. They look pretty, but the deals are mostly brain-dead affairs. You don't really need to understand the terminology or rules really, whoever has the biggest blast wins. Strangely enough one of the most hyped battles of the entire series is also skipped over right in the middle of the action to have the characters simply spend time explaining the results, just thought that was worth tossing out there.

When they're off the battle field our central duo isn't particularly interesting either. Yoga is a pretty dull and passive lead character. His involvement in the story is really little more then an excuse to introduce the viewers to the premise since we learn about the Financial District at the same time he does. He has no real involvement with the main plot going on under his nose until the final episodes. He's not a completely terrible lead though since his ideologies make for a decent foil for the ideologies of the people he meets and battles within the Financial District, especially the last boss. The real problem here is his asset Msyu. She's basically a loli-tsundere who develops into a loli-tsundere waifu. Her interactions with the Yoga as she slowly falls in love with him are cringe-inducing, and eat up far too much time. I figured a show with such a deep setting that only has eleven episodes to work with would know not to spend time on teaching your pet waifu how to eat or what a kiss is, but there's always enough time for otaku-bait I suppose.The nature of the relationship between entres and assets is something I won't go into much for the sake of avoiding spoilers, but it's where I was hoping this show would differentiate Yoga and Msyu from all the other dull male/female leads out there, but it's a sub-plot that pretty much gets dropped right before giving us any kind of meaningful answer.

I feel no need to mention most of the other entres for the reason that they are mostly one-note entities who fail to amount to something memorable due to short screen-time. I will give props to show for the antagonist (though you could also call him an anti-hero) Mikuni, who is far more interesting to follow then our boring lead and his digital waifu. He understands the effects that losing deals has on other entres (not only do they lose money, but a part of their lives will suddenly vanish). His motives were rather interesting and understandable. I applaud the show for not giving us a main antagonist solely driven by greed which is something that I was expecting from a series where money is behind everything. His plot to is analogous to the idea of quantitative easing, wherein he tries to inject Midas Money into the Japanese economy. His role in the story was a pretty interesting one that provided some interesting criticisms to the practice.

The visuals in this show are probably as unique as the show's premise, but are about as mixed overall as the show's execution. The Financial District is pretty cool to look at with it's distinctive red/white color pallet and the battles that take place are often well animated. The character art however does this bizarre thing often goofily switches between 2D designs and 3D models. It was sort of cool at first since Masakaki was the only one doing it in episode 1 and it sort of fit in with the rest of his bizarre characteristics. However, eventually you get shots of characters walking down the streets in 3D sometimes and the occasional scene where both 2D and 3D characters are interacting on screen at the same time. The actual character designs themselves are also kinda weird in a sometimes derpish way sometimes but is otherwise average. The actual acting is alright on both sides. Funimation's dub doesn't really have much young blood so if you're well acquainted with their previous works, the English version will end up being a rather simple game of "spot the voice actor". Scott Freeman as Masakaki was excellent though. I'd still recommend the Japanese version since it has the highest ratio of Engrish to Japanese speaking (a result of having the International Monetary Fund pop up from time-to-time and the attacks and terminology used during deals) since the likes of Black Lagoon and Beck. It's weird in this since some of the Engrish sounds almost convincing too.

The main plot would've benefited greatly benefited from another cour, but as is the show bites far more then it can chew. I'm not sure if the series had it's episode count slashed or not, but it certainly feels that way (just as much as it did with Angel Beats! too). Much of the series focus on Yoga/Msyu adventures in the Financial District, yet all of a sudden in the final episodes the show forces a doomsday climax with no build up. It would've been great to get a better understanding of how the show got there and how Mikuni figured into it all. Instead it feels as if people woke up one day only to find out that they suddenly have an enormous financial crisis that threatens to plunge the world into "Great Depression " tier misery. These episodes feel to quickly paced and even though the final deal itself is pretty awesome, the show resorts to what I can only call a ridiculously ass-pully resolution that felt much too cheap.


[C] is most definitely a textbook example of neat premise being ruined beyond all recognition. The unnecessary focus on boring leads you've seen before combined with a plot that didn't get the time it needed to develop alongside the weak character development hamstring the show's potential badly. It's an interesting affair still simply because of the bizarre premise and visuals and won't take up too much time.That's not enough to prevent [C] from being a failure of forgettable proportions. Come for the cute assets and explosions, it won't disappoint too much if that's the fix your looking for.

For lack of a better comparison (never saw Blues Brothers, and I’m not totally well versed in the Blues as a whole) Nerima Daikon Brothers is kinda the closest we’ve ever gotten to an anime version of Elite Beat Agents, except less dancing and more singing. It’s got a rather simple premise, as it takes place in little town called Nerima and follows a goofy trio of that live on a stage in the middle of a daikon field that’s owned a by the leader of the group, a square-jawed daikon farmer named Hideaki. Oh and their mascot, Pandaikon . He along with his cohorts, ... cousin Mako (the clingy gold digger) and Ichiro (doesn’t seem to care about anything, and oh yeah, he works for a sleazy bar) aim to rake in enough cash to build their own stadium and share their music as the “Nerima Daikon Brothers”, get famous, and become the pride of their city. Most episodes plays out in a rather formulaic path, they normally include get rich quick plots that have the Nerima Daikon Brothers run across rather nasty swindler each episode. The Daikon Bros then take it upon themselves to rid the town of this threat (with the help of a rental object from my favorite afro’d director of course) and get try to get the money they need to fulfill their dreams, the latter failing miserably each time.

The fact that the majority of the humor and story of this show is done through song is what sets this title apart from any other formulaic comedy out there. However, if the term “formulaic” hasn’t been used in this review enough for you to notice, the show’s pretty darn repetitive. One thing worth noting too is that even though this is a musical comedy, the show’s got a rather limited pool of tunes, seriously, it’s got like 5, MAX. They also all play at the same given time each episode. There’s the “I’m the villain and here’s my evil plan” song, the “Mako being a vain bitch” song, the “hey Nabeshin, we’re looking pretty screwed, so give as a random Deus ex Machina to kick some jerk’s ass” song and the “hey we’re the Nerima Daikon Brothers and we’re here to wreck your evil plan and get rich at the same time” song. It’s strange, I honestly suspected that a show this repetitive would’ve worn me down to my last nerve by the time it ended, but it never did. I credit that to the fact that it seemed to me that the show knew which parts to keep the same, and what to change each time in order to keep itself from becoming dull. The length of the series also helps since this is probably the only comedy I liked, finished, and was glad their was never anything more made of it. I’m sure that had it taken another cour of my life, the act would’ve gotten old well before the end.

So what is it that the show did right to preserve the routine? The fact that even though the plot structure and tunes played out similarly each and every episode wasn’t enough to take away from the humorous dialogue and occasional pop-culture reference that we’e different each episode (it has it’s running gags, but these don’t feel overplayed at all and I found them rather funny at least). The fact that the song lyrics we’re always different in order to suit the occasion is what really made this a memorable experience. It also helps that not all the episodes essentially boil down to the same rinse-repeat formula. After the first 3rd or so, the show tosses in police babe Widget who adds her own set of unique quirks to the show (including a romance with a Pandaikon of all things) and a new song, which is something I appreciate given the aforementioned lack of tunes.

The last third of the show also puts a stop to the episodic shenanigans in favor of taking a bit more of serious look at what the Daikon Bros are willing to do accomplish their dreams. It’s great to see a comedy take itself a bit seriously without losing sight of what made it fun to begin with, and that’s something Nerima Daikon Brothers got right….for the most part. The actual ending was a bit too random rushed and anticlimatic for my tastes. Weird to comment on a comedy not having a satisfying ending, I know, but given that the show was actually doing a story arc reasonably well beforehand, I think it’s still worth mentioning. That and the fact that the show also shoehorns in some political commentary into it’s humor a bit too. That’s all fine and dandy, but good luck catching that humor if you don’t have a good understanding of the political arena of 2006 Japan.

Last thing I want to bring attention too is the dub/sub comparison. I personally dig the radical script changes (and in Mako’s case, character change since she’s pretty much turned into stereotypical dumb trailer trash in the dub, and it works) Can’t really comment too much on the Japanese version since I never saw much of it, but I’ve seen enough to know that with each versions you get different jokes, which lends the show some rewatchability. I personally preferred watching the dub version since during the end credits, the actors thank you for buying the show. You can’t beat that.

So yeah, it’s a pretty good comedy I’d say. Just don’t marathon it, something tells me that given the nature of the show, this ain’t something you’d want to watch in large doses. Also best to stay away if you don’t like Nabeshin stuff too, or object to having catchy tunes reverberate in your head. Most importantly, stay away if you just so happen to hate fun things.

So what’s Area 88 about? It’s the story ace jet-fighter Shin Kazama, a dude who gets suckered into signing a 3 year contract by a jealous childhood friend that would send him to a hellish military base in the Middle East: Area 88. According to the contract, Shin must either remain at the base, far from his loved ones until he earns 1.5 million on the job to buy his way out, or completes his missions for 3 years. Shin opts for the former option, and must escape before the horrors of Area 88 erode his humanity.

My first impression of this OVA was "hey, this ... is pretty much an anime version of Catch-22", and indeed there are plenty of parallels on the surface level (I mean, a rogue jet-pilot completing missions only to get discharged, come on!) . Thing is, this OVA trades in the absurdist dark humor of Catch-22 with less silly character drama. Said drama was for the most part alright. Most of the soap-opera-ish comes from the side-plot revolving around Shin's lover Ryoko and the lengths she goes to to use her connections as the daughter to the CEO of a major airline. As a subplot, it works just fine for the most part, the only sizeable gripe I had here that the villain here, aforementioned jealous childhood friend, was never really characterized as nothing more then a sleazy slime ball. However, I liked how Ryoko is characterized a pragmatic individual, rather then having her be a mere "objective" for Shin to return to.

And as for the real meat and potatoes, this OVA does little wrong. It captures a sense of harsh reality I really don’t see too often. The cast here consists of Shin’s comrades in arms: mainly un-empathetic killers. The guys are extremely easy to sympathize with for the most part, hell there doing this shit to survive. As the story progresses, we see subtle changes in Shin’s attitude towards his situation as he deals with impediments to his goal of escaping Area 88. He’s forced to carry on, not even sure if his own livelihood is worth having to take part 1.5 million dollars worth of murder. This all builds up to a catharsis that while defies common sense, is perfectly in-tune with his character.

Production values wise, don’t let the fact that this is and older title fool you into thinking it’s not up to par, because it most certainly is. It’s an OVA remember? It doesn’t have to deal with the budget constraints of longer TV titles. The choreographing off the dog-fights are glowing example of what 80s hand-drawn animation is capable of. It’s all consistent and easy to look at. Complimented by a solid, and dramatic soundtrack no less. Regarding the art style, no this title nothing to do with Leiji Matsumodo, I was shocked too. But yeah, the character models are OK, sometimes rather unattractive though. The main character is a blonde haired, blue eyed Japanese dude which I find kinda funny, but hey, this is anime.

Can’t really end this post with out emphasizing that this was 3-episode adaptation of a much longer manga, so expect a rather open-ending. I wouldn’t consider this a detriment as some would since the last act sort of fooled me into thinking that it would end on a simple, happy, and anti-climactic note (if so, the demeanor of this review would be noticeably less positive). Everything in the plot is resolved, so the last 10ish minutes should be devoted to a denouement, right? Nah. The story swerves in a direction at the last moment that forged the sort of powerful ending I hadn’t seen since seeing the finale to Berserk years back. Powerful stuff.

PS: Never saw the anime version to this from 2004. Will get to that just to bitch about how it probably isn’t as good.

A title born from the people responsible for the creation of Serial Experiments Lain. NieA_7 was based of a doujinshi of the same name by the esteemed Yoshitoshi ABe. Apparently, the staff of Lain wanted to create a very light-hearted title to follow up the sever tone found in Lain. In short: this doesn’t really work out in the show’s favor. Why? I’m getting there.The story revolves around a hard-working high-schooler Mayuko (Mayu), who lives on her own and struggles to make ends meet between her three low-wage jobs. Mayu is a shy, introverted, and to make life worse, has an obnoxious, food-swiping, UFO obsessed ... alien named Niea for a room-mate (ranked as an “under 7 alien as per her alien class system for some reason). Did I forget to mention? Aliens have colonized on Earth years prior and now live alongside humans. I’d have gone on longer with the synopsis, but the fact that I did not points to my first issue regarding the show, the lack of explanation regarding just about everything regarding the setting. Not that I’m implying that leaving a number of questions open for the viewer is bad thing mind you. A later work based off of another ABe title, Haibane Renmei, did “leaving stuff to your imagination” in a way that NieA_7 is far, far off from. In Haibane Renmei, questions are left behind, but not a way that affects the narrative or renders elements of the plot pointless, as is the case with NieA_7 unfortunately. Gaps in information have everything to do with the “alien” aspect of the show. For the most part, this a show that mostly does not really care much for it’s sci-fiesque setting and keeps a more grounded focus on mostly the human characters and their daily interactions. It’s unfortunate in this case since the show lightly touches upon themes of alienation, discrimination, and the idea of adjusting to new settings that could’ve gone much further then what ended up happening. What we got instead was far less compelling (more on that a bit later since now I’m harping on what the show didn’t do as opposed to what it did). The opening episode leaves behind a number of questions and they only accumulate as the show progresses. Like, why did the aliens come to earth? What’s up with the mother ship? Why does it send out signals to Niea? How can Niea hear the signals even though she’s the only antennae-less alien in the entire series? I could go further, but the point is clear. Have any questions regarding the setting? Well, they’ll likely remain just that, only questions. The show’s tiny focus essentially renders most of the setting as pointless add-ons. I’m still not really sure what the point of the aliens were in this show at all. Even though we hardly learn a thing about their species, they still appear regularly to perform their comedic shtick which I felt to be hit or miss. The aliens also ultimately add nothing to the show and have no involvement in the show’s central conflict: Mayu’s inner conflict (asides from Niea, whose mostly only adds to Mayu’s stress) . The sub-plot regarding Niea and the alien mother ship was not given nearly enough detail since it mostly happens off-screen and no one cares enough to ask about it by the time the show’s over. Easily the biggest head-scratcher of the entire series.

Yeah, so this is a series that tosses some potentially cool elements at the viewers only to say "screw it, let's do some comedy". Disappointing maybe, but that's not really what sinks the show. This would not be as big a problem for me if the comedy was actually good, but that's not the case. Mostly the result of one big nasty wrench that was thrown into my enjoyment of the show the titular character: Niea. She's basically Edward from Cowboy Bebop, except she puts all her time and effort into being downright annoying. She consistently torments Mayuko by gathering trash in her apartment, blowing up parts of her property, and worst of all constantly whining about food, or being hungry. Oh god, every time food ends up being the subject you can expect the exact same thing: Niea: FOOOOOD! GIMME MORE FOOOOD Mayuko: NO, THIS IS ALL WE HAVE Niea: FOOOOOOOOD! So much effort was put into making Niea is wacky and annoying as possible that the creators forgot to make her likable. The humor is passable when Niea is not around (kinda liked Chiaki and Karna, and the Weed Bath house episode is pretty darn funny), but that's nowhere near being enough to make up for when she is. The audio doesn't really much to praise either, asides from the voice acting (watched it mostly dubbed, the voice actors did a good job of trying to sell the humor, but they were fighting an uphill battle to begin with).

The soundtrack, I'm not even sure if there was one, If there is, it's either too muted or extremely unnoticeable since I can't recall taking notice of background music outside of the last episode. The ending theme, however, I found to be catchy and I dug the stringy instrumentals. The opening? Ghastly. Sounds like some dude who walked into a recording studio and tried to sing with strep throat. Lastly, I can't remember having ever given much attention to a show's sound effects, but NieA_7 is an exception. The creators of the show literally ripped several cheesy sound-bites from the Hannah Barbara library and tossed them into the show to enhance the already weak comedy. The sound effects are often times the closest the show is to being funny sadly enough.

This show does at least have more to it then missed opportunities and mostly sucky comedy. Mayuko herself is an interesting character when Niea is not involved. Her struggles come off as very as very easy to relate to. She starts off as a the "straight man" of sorts in an annoying comedic duo, but the later episodes shed light on her surrounding circumstances that are common and cause most people stress in some way or another. Whether it be her monetary troubles, social anxiety, living away from home. I have to give the show some props for appropriately portraying these issues, even in-spite of all the baggage. Don't expect any catharsis though. The show doesn't really end so much as just "stops" without much spectacle or payoff.

The strengths of NieA_7 underscore (lol) just what this series should have been all along: A tale of a young, hard working introvert trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. Instead, we have a title that bogs itself down with unnecessary elements before coming to a somewhat unsatisfying stop. If slice 'o' life comedy is your anathema, you'd best look elsewhere since there's nothing here that will change your mind. For everyone else, your probably better of watching stuff like Planetes, a SOL/Drama that succeeds on all both fronts, or Haibane Renmei for mysterious elements that are thought provoking, rather than rage inducing.

PS: You probably shouldn't watch this show if you are Indian and easily offended