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Natsuki Crisis
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Title Info
- seen: 1-2 of 2
- type: OAV
- grade: watchable
- genre: magic_war
- made: unknown
- Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
- mod: none
Only two episodes, but enough time to show some promise. Admittedly within the genre of `fighting schoolgirls' which is a pretty specialist genre. The story follow the schoolgirl Natsuki starting the day with a nice punch up. Yeah, she's into martial arts for `fun and friendship' which is a very nice change. She's `normal', even tempered and good natured...heavens. Of course the situation becomes a bit more complex when another student, with a somewhat different attitude arrives, but it leads to some nice character drama. Sadly things become a bit more violent and predictable when the `nemesis' school full of martial arts badasses and a `demon' student council leader get involved. But even as things move towards a fighting anime, there's still a certain spark of originality and character.
Of course a lot of people will think i'm being awful generous. Some of the material, especially towards the end, is awfully cliche and the plot never gets that deep. The development of `energy attacks' is also an unwelcome development. But then the whole fighting schoolgirl schtick is pretty thin. I think most schools, and the police, would take issue with a squad of uniformed goons marching into a school and randomly crippling schoolgirls. In addition the show has some (well, one or two) very dramatic events, but then wimps out and provides a character escape. Still, even given these problems, I consider it watchable and interesting...but at two episodes it was always going to be an orphan.
The animation is a bit older but is quite pleasant and soft. It has a good eye for anatomy and the characters look `older' and more realistic than most animes of this kind. This knowledge expands into the fighting and other action which has some pleasant moments of realism and atmosphere. Indeed a few traces of shoujo influence in the animation style, content and dialog are probably what make this an interesting experiment. Against this is good technical design (in gear and fighting) and some fairly realistic violence. Certainly the animation style is sufficient and fitting for the material being presented.
Going to have to take my word for it, because none of my regular sites have a review of this title.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:22 WST 2009