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Midnight Panther
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Title Info
- seen: 1-2 of 2
- type: OAV
- grade: flawed
- genre: erotica
- Other elements of this title:
- Contains explicit sexual content.
- dur: 60
- source: Anime 18
- form: dub
- made: 1998
- Review created: Thu Jul 12 14:26:00 EST 2001
- mod: none
Warning for those with sensitive dispositions. This review is of a Hentai (sexually explicit). In this case one that tries to mix character, story and erotica, although not to an impressive degree of success.
Synopsis
The world in which we begin, although we don't get to explore too much of it, is a very standard fantasy world. And travelling through this world is an old lady and her three young female companions. I'm not sure if they're daughters, as at least one was found as a child. In any case she travels the land mixing up herbal medicines while the girls stage performances and do odd jobs to help make ends meet. With each of them having a special ability.
Got the image? well, forget it. The old lady is really brewing up potent poisons and other strange concoctions. The three girls put on `idol concerts' with the required amount of fan service and moonlight as assassins. One of them likes to strip naked...and then turn into a panther and kill her victim. One likes to seduce men and use her mastery of assassination techniques to kill them during sex. The third one, the little sister of the group, spends most of her time seeking ingredients for the mother, which just happen to be parts of huge and deadly monsters.
After demonstrating their, quite impressive, skills the story kicks into gear. It seems that they've just landed one of the biggest jobs possible. The local insane, tyrannical despot has finally annoyed someone with money. Although in this case it's a little bit more personal, it seems like one of the girls has some childhood memories that need revisiting.
Review
It's a really interesting comparison between the story design and the story execution. The core story here is actually pretty good. The idea of an old lady who does the information work and poison generation, and her three trained assassins, is not too bad. The girls themselves are quite reasonable too. The seducer is somewhat cynical, perceptive and worldly wise. The shape shifter is girlish and energetic and likes to meet people, even if only for a snack. The youngest could almost run an anime series herself. She's got a tragic past, magically enhanced strength (along with a curse from the same) and is skilled at using a big sword to hunt dragons and monsters. Her personality being pure tom-boy with a slice of innocence. Even the bad guys have strong personalities and styles. I'm pretty sure i've seen this as a manga, and the story depth probably comes from this source.
But, sadly, it all falls apart once it actually begins. The story is played out in an incredibly direct and simplistic fashion. There's no depth, logic or subtlety about it at all. Meanwhile the character dialog is simplistic and some of the dialog and action way over the top. Most annoying is the old lady whose screeching voice and attempts at humor are dire. Meanwhile there's a lunatic on the `enemy' side who's just really corny, unfunny, and gets way too much screen time. While this is a video intended for adults the story, direction and sense of humor are childish at worst and average at best. It doesn't come any near to matching the promise of the premise.
Even worse than this is the poor design work. It feels like they couldn't be bothered with actually inventing a fantasy world and have just cobbled something together. The world has no sense of `belief' in it. The highlights being the `idol concert' the `pussycats' do at two stages. Done in the fashion of a modern concert it's amazingly out of place. Likewise the youngest daughter going hunting in a loose t-shirt and cut-off denims. There's just lots of little, lazy, failings in style and design.
But that's all right, it's got explicit animated sex to make up for messing up the story. While it gets a guarded approval because there's no rape, demons or minors involved it's got some negative elements for the hentai among us. The first thing is that most of the nudity or sex happens when the girls are `working'. As such the sexual partner tends to end up rather explicitly dead, not just at the end but rather during. This would seem to restrict the erotic potential. The other thing is that there's not really much sex in this hour long anime, so if you're buying it for that purpose you might find yourself disappointed.
The production is reasonable. Excellent for a hentai but sort of low average for a normal anime OAV. The character artwork is actually good in most cases, but motion animation is mostly average. The scenery is plagued by the lack of design mentioned earlier. The color is solid, the artwork decent, and there's one or two SD moments that are almost good. And then we get to the voices. Being a hentai it is dubbed, and it's a real mixed bag. Some of the voices are actually good, much better than the show deserves. However at least three voices are painfully over-acted and it is these voices and characters who dominate the screen time. I didn't notice much in the way of music, and I think the light idol songs were left in Japanese.
Other Reviews
- Lord Carnage review I didn't actually expect to find another review, but Lord Carnage's review is excellent. We seem to agree, with he being unimpressed by the story, character, humor or production in general. I guess I liked the characters more than he did, or their potential at least. All elements considered he finds it a title worth avoiding (0/5).
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:22 WST 2009