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Eatman 98
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Title Info
- seen: 1-12 of 12
- type: OAV
- grade: watchable
- made: unknown
- Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
- mod: none
I have a strong suspicion that this OAV is by the same people who did the original Eatman OAV. This is because a lot of the stylistic elements are similar. Thankfully, however, they've also improved their skills, leading to this set of OAV's being far superior to the originals. While we still don't know what happened to the world it is clear that it has been broken up into many `pockets' of civilization, with varied cultures, technology and appearance. And wandering through this are mercenaries, including the hero of this anime `bolt crank' who is tough, experienced and has a weird diet. Doesn't sound like much? well, considering that he can eat almost anything (including weapons) and then re-form them when needed (including weapons) and you have a fairly handy ability.
And while we don't exactly learn where or how bolt got his abilities, we get some very interesting hints. This is helped by the fact that this version of bolt is a lot more animated and talkative than the version in the first OAV. Don't get me wrong, it's still aiming for the laid-back enigmatic strong silent type, but at least he is now interesting and (mostly) believable. In addition the stories are much better. They still tend to be somewhat unsubtle, picking their `aim' and going for it regardless of believability. On the other hand the writing is mostly skillful enough to get away with it, the characters and stories are interesting and the atmosphere generally works. The main irritant is that bolt, as befits his `cool' image often seems to have godlike luck, knowledge and power, especially when the story needs it. Still, these ambitious, mostly successful and multi-episode stories are very watchable.
Sadly the animation weaknesses and budget restrictions from the first OAV series are still somewhat in evidence. The animation is decent, but lots of repeated frames, restricted views or distance shots have been used to lower the budget. In addition the technical design is not great. Also the usage of bolts power has been greatly extended, so that he is regularly pulling forth huge items, which often look weird and strain belief (in addition to the eye-bending computer animation used for the event). This consideration also limits the action scenes, with most of them being short or fairly static, although it does have its moments.
Hm, a nice fresh review from the Anime Review states that if you can overcome three core problems, and like the idea of a wandering enigmatic nomad type, then there is something worth seeing here. Overall the review is pretty positive.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:17 WST 2009