Anime Meta-Review
Miroku: Nihilistic Warrior
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Title Info
- seen: 1-2 of 2
- type: OAV
- grade: flawed
- made: unknown
- Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
- mod: none
Well knock me down with super-powered psychic space ninja! This anime drops you right into the middle of a fight that has obviously originated in a manga far, far away. It seems the `bad' super-powered ninja want to re-awaken the `dragon' which will put the whole world at risk. The frequent flashes of spaceships and high-tech equipment give a pretty good indication of what this means. Not to worry though because the `good' ninja have the title character on their side, and thus can begin kicking butt in the sure knowledge of victory.
Not that any of this matters, since the story is more for appearances sake than anything else. Basically there are an immense number of weird people with weird powers who start fighting. The powers are supposedly related to this buried technology, but what it means in practice is that there is no limit on how powerful or silly they can be. This combines with the magical warrior staples of considering a severed arm to be a flesh wound and endless threatening and posturing to flesh out the show. It is loud, noisy and both people and powers appear from nowhere and either kill or be killed. Likewise all the Ninja hooey like being able to teleport by running really fast is present in sizable quantities. Tedious, characterless and shallow. Perhaps someone who has the manga can enjoy this as being the best fights from the manga, but as a stand-alone product it's a total waste of time.
This is greatly enhanced by the fact that these sort of special effects fighting anime rely on great animation. Cool characters, cool moves and cool effects can make up for the lack of substance. Sadly the animation on this is energetic but messy. Really crude linework, low detail and color that looks like it has been splashed on give this a feeling like a partly finished sketch. The action and effects animation is also poor, both in level of detail, smoothness and over-reliance on repeated frame sequences and still frames. Some of the characters and powers may have had some promise, but at the frenetic pace this anime runs there's little point in paying much attention to individuals. This feeling of cut-price production extends into script, dialogue and all other elements as well, leaving little of value in this title.
Not only is there not a review of this title from my regular sources, there's very little information about the title at all. In all the internet the only occurence was in a chronology. Still, this is not a hidden classic so sinking without trace is perfectly acceptable.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:22 WST 2009