Anime Meta-Review
Ushio and Tora
Index's
Home
Alphabetic
Quality
Genre
People
Recent
By Date
Title Info
- seen: 1-12 of 12
- type: OAV
- grade: worthy
- made: unknown
- Review created: A while ago, i'll revise it eventually.
- mod: none
This is a surpisingly fun and stylish ride, with many familiar elements but all wonderfully combined into something new. It revolves around the relationship between the monster Tora (Tiger in Japanese, and it makes sense both in looks and attitude) and Ushio (a priests son) after Ushio is forced by circumstance to free the beast who has been pinned in a basement for 500 years. He's pinned by a magical beast hunting spear and Tora is distressed to find that the spear can actually transform Ushio into something quite difficult to eat. It gets cooler from here, as both characters are quite complex and gain some respect for one another. Add Ushio's romantic interest, who thankfully is competent and complete, Tora finding out about the real world, Ushio finding out about the monster world and some of the most interesting monsters in this genre and you have a lot of material to play with. Add good dialogue, excellent action scenes, clever writing and well represented characters (especially for Tora) backed by good animation and you have something worth watching. Those of you who like monster bash and action anime might find this even more so. Bonus points for the school scenes with an invisible Tora riding on Ushio's shoulders, and actually being the more interested student (well, he's been in a basement for 500 years so he's a bit starved for entertainment). The last tape is all done in SD mode, which is amusing but light weight.
The Anime Movie Guide likes it, giving it 4 stars and calling it `spiky and brilliant', but i'm not sure about it being a `mirror image' to Tenchi Muyo.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:26 WST 2009