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Himiko-Den
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Title Info
- seen: 1-4
- type: TV
- grade: watchable
- made: unknown
- Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
- mod: none
I was sort of expecting a shoujo title. What I got was a pleasant and entertaining, but a bit derivative, fantasy title. The opening is fairly sudden, but goes something like this. In an alternate world there is a force for light (lord bakko) and a force for darkness. A ritual to pick the next queen of the light goes rather seriously wrong when an enemy force (who have the full evil empire intent on conquest bit going) move in to seize the light for their own ends. However the light wants none of that and thus scatters the potential queens and a sacrifice far and wide. The sacrifice herself ends up on earth, but this is clearly only a short break to grow up ready for round two.
That's a bit too spoiler-full (although there is a lot I left out) but I think most anime watchers have seen all this before. On one side you have the powerful evil empire. On the other the scattered faithful of the forces of light. All of the action is between the `heroes' of the various sides, all with sizable amounts of their own power, rather extreme outfits and anime archetype personalities. And caught in the middle are the people from another world, who none the less possess the power that will help decide the outcome. It is pretty much by the numbers fantasy stuff. Don't get me wrong, it is quite good fun. The various characters are interesting, with strong personalities, and the story has all sorts of interesting sub-stories going and gets up a fair amount of pace, but it can't claim to be too original. Of course since these sort of things take a while to build up depth and epic quality it is quite possible it will get even better as time goes by.
The same feelings occur in the animation and design areas. Competent and solid but somehow familiar. The animation is average modern TV quality, with some re-use of sequences and simple action scenes. In addition the design is kept pretty simple with the bad guy armor being so basic as to look comical. The animation also looks a bit muddy at times, and its ability to do effects and atmosphere is less than impressive. This is not helped by some strange world and character design that makes it feel more like a stage production than a believable fantasy world. The characters are loud, but likable, and the dialog somewhat less than sparkling. Solid, competent but unimpressive (and even unambitious) is the feeling I get from this one.
new, old or just not very interesting? none of the sites I source from had a review of this title.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:19 WST 2009