I take a look at another of many stories dealing with super powers, and school environments. This one with many interesting twists.
I speak of course, about "Absolute Duo".
As some of you know, I begin to tire of the almost absolute nature of Japanese authors, that believe all anime (or manga, for that matter) must begin with a high-school environment. But I'm not going to rant about that. For me, basic story is everything; so the startup environment becomes a small gripe, but a gripe nonetheless.
I have been very late in reviewing this anime, because firstly, I've been very busy writing some fan fiction. But also, because I wanted to watch the show again, in English Dub. The first time I watched it was in the Japanese with subtitles. I can report that the subtitled version is much better. The chosen English voices (aside from Caitlin Glass) were mostly mediocre to terrible.
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To that end, I wish to speak a little about Caitlin Glass. Ms. Glass was born in D.C., and raised in California. She presently lives in Texas. Caitlin Glass isn't right for every character she plays; but in this case, she was so over the top, that I just had to mention the great outrageous character voice she did for the character Lilith Bristol, supposedly a very English personality.
Arrogant, spoiled, patrician; Caitlin Glass faked everything Lilith had to be with charm, grace and fun. Lilith Bristol was so over the top that everything she said and did, had comic overtones that just had me grinning, in every scene she was in. One misses out on Caitlin's voice, for the overall much better subtitled version, but if you want to be charmed by a dubbed voice look for Lilith Bristol. You won't be disappointed.
Caitlin Glass is often caught doing a lot of things one would not expect. She was the ADR Director of this show; and she is heard in other anime. The one that comes to mind is a song she sings, with many other characters in "Cat Planet Cuties", where she is the best sounding. Her character sings this song, where her character is an Android that is keeping faith with her previous owner, now dead for more than 900-years. After that, her character travels back to home world, and pitches herself into the ocean, in the commission of suicide. She just couldn't bear to live anymore. Anyone who can't feel pathos about that, has had his/her pathos button burned out.
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Let's now return to Absolute Duo.
Since most of the characters are quite formulaic, I only wish to speak about one or two, in the main. And that begins with Kevin Wayfair.
Kevin Wayfair is a total abomination. His back story does not fit his character. His brother dies, in ways not detailed in the story, so he reacts by believing in nothing and no-one. He becomes the penultimate villain character, with only a one-dimensional face on everything, including his universally single-minded desire to kill anything that becomes a possible threat; in his single-minded drive to become the strongest power center. He doesn't even have an over-arching reason to acquire power, and applies it to nothing but the acquisition of more of it.
Lot's of people lose their brothers. They don't become homicidal maniacs. They usually get over it, and live normal lives. Even in the Absolute Duo universe, where several characters have lost loved ones. They didn't become insane monsters. Difficult to handle sometimes, but not irretrievably insane.
Now I want to speak briefly about one of the teachers in our hero's homeroom; Rito Tsukimi. For those of you who have watched part or all of Absolute Duo; you'll already know. Rito is 'bang her head against the wall because it feels good' totally nuts. Couple homicidal rage with latent nymphomania, and you get pretty close to this teacher with the playboy bunny ears and a personality Marquis De Sade would have been proud of. And this is what the head-mistress of the school allows near young teenagers.
The other side of Rito's equation is that without her, there would have been very little humor in the show, albeit dark sadistic humor. She, with great cheer and aplomb, sometimes decides to include herself in the occasional scheduled combat matches, just to introduce what she thinks is funny. This amounts to converting these matches into death-matches a'la Freddy Kruger. That's reasonably funny too, if you're into that sort of thing.
It would not have been difficult to edit a few plot-lines, or dialog, to make Rito an 'insider' spy for Kevin Wayfair. But that doesn't happen, she is totally loyal to her head-mistress of the school. No reason I can come up with, and it isn't in the story. Don't look for it, just enjoy that somehow Rito is on the side of 'good and righteousness'.
Now I wish to switch gears and talk about the plot. Because of the single-sided villain in the story, there isn't much for the authors to develop. But they did have some mildly good plot devices in the story that I could enjoy.
1). Did anyone notice that this school has enemies that are not a competing club in the school, or other inside faction? The enemies are all external from the main campus of the school, and thereby produces a story plot that is significantly different from most other high-school 'spice of life' adversarial conflicts.
2). Does anyone notice that the head-mistress of this school is not running a school at all, but a factory for super-humans? This explains why she runs two separate campuses. And because of this developing plot-line, she has absolutely no compassion for her students at all. Sakuya Tsukomo is however, a very good politician, and knows when she must appear compassionate when politic to do so. For this reason, many respect her, but she has almost no friends at all. Is it any wonder her handle is 'Blaze Diabolica'?
Sakuya is so dark, that she could almost be classed as a true anti-villain. In the end I had real trouble with her absolute refusal to join forces with the other character that has no back-story. Equipment Smith. I see no reason why not. Exo-suit equipment for augmenting the physical strength of a Blaze Student would in fact produce a pair of 'Absolute Duo', in a much shorter time. The results were all positive, I could not see a negative to this alliance.
In short, Sakuya was a very guarded and secretive individual, for reasons difficult to defend. Equipment Smith's main failings dealt with poor choices for personnel to be augmented. The means of augmentation had few negatives.
3). Did anyone notice that 'Miyabi Hotaka" was never defeated at the end? She got talked out of her desire to be powerful beyond all imagining. Plain and simple. This produced a very unsatisfying ending. Without that moment in the story, the pairing of Miyabi and Kevin would have been demonstrably stronger than the 'Blaze' alone. And head-mistess Sakuya would have met with defeat. She won because of a weak-minded fool who should never have been augmented in the first place. And Kevin was an equally poor choice for augmentation, for opposite reasons.
In this way, the authors provide for us a straw-man, that looks like the whole idea of augmentation is a poor one. It isn't. Only the choice of people was flawed. For example, a sane man with a gun does not shoot up his neighborhood, just because he can. Only a flawed one would even consider it.
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Now I want to talk about the art and sound in the show. The artwork is actually quite good, and even contains some startling parallax artwork and other niceties. But I continue to question the use of eye-colors in the metallic range. It makes the characters look like dead automatons. I wish artists would refrain from this practice. It tarnishes otherwise good artwork.
The soundtrack is quite good, although there isn't a whole bunch of it. The opening and closing title music is mostly very bad j-pop music. The exception is the first end-title track, which is very good, and its harmonies and rhythm is not too egregious.
The dialog tends towards too much, but not to the point of extreme annoyance; aside from Rito's dialog which tends to say too much, and give away her characteristics too early in the story.
With all of that, I close a review of a very flawed anime in 'Absolute Duo', which did in fact have some good developmental plot points, and some excellent actions scenes. Oh and don't forget the rare and interesting, although poorly developed characters that bear watching; Like Diabolica and Rito. And the never speaking character 'Ryuutarou Tatsuno' who flexes his muscles to impress the girls, and gets his over-muscled physique stomped into the pavement way more often than he should have.
I give Absolute Duo a weak 7.
