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Title Info

  • seen: 1-3 of 3
  • type: OAV
  • grade: burnable
  • genre: magic_war
  • Other elements of this title:
    • This title may offend the sensitive.
  • dur: 85
  • form: dub
  • source: U.S. Manga Corp.
  • made: unknown
  • Review created: Tue Feb 13 15:37:17 EST 2001
  • mod: Mon Feb 19 20:01:59 EST 2001

Anime derived from video games starts with a handicap. While it means the names and perhaps the characters are well known the story and personalities are generally too shallow for anime. The wise producer will start from this popular foundation and add another level of depth. Or you could do what this title does and just make a confusing mishmash of half-baked elements that attempts to pass off its complete lack of structure as depth.

Now normally I like to give a synopsis of the title to start with, but in this case I don't really know that this is possible. Effectively Japan has been flattened by a powerful earthquake and rebuilt. And one of the major new building in this new metropolis is an incredibly huge but weird school for gifted students. In other words lots of really exotic and strange characters with super-powers. And some of them, the toughest, have been granted magical stones of power-up to make them even stronger. Indeed they're able to transform into, dah dah, video game characters and re-arrange the landscape.

The plot, being generous, involves the UN realizing that there's a couple too many earthquakes. Since this includes earthquakes in places geologically incapable of having them this raises some suspicious. Fortunately a professor from the school is able to explain it to them. It turns out that the mysterious principle has surpassed humanity and is now basically a god. And the school is simply a training ground for potential disciples. And, even worse, he believes that there is an even greater force from another dimension behind the principal, who will obviously intend to subjugate and/or destroy the earth. And the UN, improbably, accepts this.

Meanwhile the various super-powered characters start to fight it out. We've got one pink haired investigator and his `pet', who looks like an overly chesty woman, who's seeking revenge on the principal. We've got the hero, who has an overly chesty sister, who's potentially powerful but currently neutral and an incestuous brother, with his overly chesty sister / lover who are servants of the principal. And, well, they fight each other.

It sounds almost okay, but in practice it just a complete load of rubbish. The anime jumps between people and events in an incredibly confusing way. You sort of have to go back and actually work out how the bits fit together, which completely breaks the flow. Likewise the dialog, both character and story, is incredibly fragmented and pretentious. Characters will simply spurt out these incredible lines, none of which seem to fit together or make much sense in relation to what's happening. It's trying to be deep and meaningful but it simply ends up being painful and cringe producing. And the dub manages to amplify both the corniness, and disconnection, of the script by a factor of thousands. This story clearly wants to be fast paced, while having a powerful dramatic impact, but it never comes close. It's simply overblown, pompous and irritating.

But that's all right, perhaps it can fill in the gaps with some impressive action and high production values. Well, it might look alright on the back of the box but it certainly get's weird once you start watching. In keeping with the design work the characters are all completely over the top and they look weird. The proportions and appearance of all the characters is strangely alien and quite unattractive. Which means that when they try to have bouncing boobs and other fan service, which there is lots of, it simply looks strange and wrong. Likewise outfits and machinery, and elements like huge shoulder pads on a UN leader, are overblown and massively un-realistic with no internal logic. The actual art style is very sharp, so that everyone looks as if they are made from chips of plastic, rather than flesh. The fights themselves have their moments, there's lots of movement and some interesting camera work, but they're too rare to be sufficient. They're also far from smooth, and the transformation into power suited versions, and yelling out special attacks, is as overblown as anything else in this video. The incestuous siblings `armor of love', complete with naked sister at the front, probably wins some sort of award for being tastlessly weird.

For some reason, probably insanity, I actually tracked down the conclusion tape and watched it. while it's two OAV's they're both only 20 minute's, so they're about the same length as the first. It's got all the faults of the first tape, with the only difference being there's more fighting...leading up to a stupidly over-powered bout to finish it off. It certainly doesn't, in even the most optimistic view, get any better or start making any sense. It should also be mentioned that the blood, including a fatality or two, starts to flow more freely as the series progresses.

As mentioned the dub is awful. Lots of fake sounding voices saying unlikely things and with no connection to each other. They might actually be talented, but they've been told to ham it up and they do. I don't recall the music positively or negatively. It doesn't really matter, unless you're amazingly generous you'll almost certainly consider this a pretty diabolical title. And the fact that it seems to think it's being cool and interesting just makes you wonder how delusional the producers must be.

I also noted that the credits include "Apollo Smile", the self styled "Anime Babe"...or some such. The only reason I remember the name is from a nice toasty flame-fight on usenet. Well, all I can say is that if this role was the pinnacle of her voice acting career i'll manage without in future. And no, she doesn't get an `important people' entry.

Other Reviews

  • THEM review This review starts putting the boot in early and makes it clear that this is a title to avoid. They really dislike the fan service, at least in part because there's so little else in the video. They also agree that the dub is fairly scary. It's quite an entertaining review though (1/5).
  • Anime Review review The review here is almost positive compared to the others. The plot is dismissed as inconsequential and the fan service as excessive and the execution flawed. However it is suggested that, for a fighting anime, it could even be enjoyable in a sort of `dumb fun' way (2/5).
  • Lord Carnage review As ever the review is brief, but the message is very clear. Given it's heritage not much was expected, but it is stated you'd have to be a huge fan of fight anime to get anything out of this. Also agree's that the dub is terrible (1/5).

       
                 
                 
       

Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:26 WST 2009