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Title Info
- seen: 1-2 of 2
- type: OAV
- grade: watchable
- source: fansub
- form: sub
- dur: 60
- made: unknown
- Review created: Sun Jul 8 02:53:22 EST 2001
- mod: none
It's terrible to have to review something like this. While this alternate world high powered fantasy beat em up covers a lot of bases, and is quite entertaining, it ends up feeling a bit confused and sort of, well, unremarkable.
Synopsis
The opening shots are brightly colored scenes of a high-school full of cute girls in the fantasy version of a school uniform. However it only takes a couple of moments to realise that this is not going to be a high school drama. Instead it seems there is another, rather strange, world linked to ours which is potentially full of power. And while this world seems to be full of peaceful occupants there are visitors from our world more than happy to seize this power for themselves.
In essence there are at least three factions feuding over this power, a force great enough that mastering it may well give domination of our world. However to awaken the power fully several items are needed before the complex ritual can be performed. And in most variants of the ritual one of the ingredients just happens to be, naturally, a particular cute high school girl. As a result Miki, and her best friend, find themselves kidnapped to a strange world and centrally involved in this dangerous conflict.
Review
And now for one of the weird aspects to this show I couldn't work into the synopsis. This fantasy world also happens to be linked to all times within our own world. I assume the transition is relatively difficult, because this elements isn't used for `time travel wars' in our own world. However what it does mean is that the cast of the show are named characters from history, although I doubt they've got much in the way of historical accuracy. Most of them I don't know, my Japanese history not being that great, but the crazed scientist Leonardo was simple enough. It doesn't really end up meaning much, other than perhaps lending weight to a couple of obscure scenes and quotes.
The next element is that while it is a fantasy world, and actually novel and interesting, it ends up being a stage for the fighting. The bad guys have endless amounts of `summoned' cannon fodder and super technology including cannons, airships, motorbikes and cyborgs. The good guys have their own weird brand of high tech, making more use of natural forces. And, over the course of these two episodes, they basically fight it out. There's a lot more `action', albeit with strange weapons, than there is fantasy or character work.
And as such it doesn't really work. The short running time and focus on action means that the story ends up being very simple. It's basically the old `hunt the artifact' game again. This strongly reduces from the originality and interest in the title and makes it seem a little bit familiar and formulaic. There's some nice scenery to view and the world seems interesting, but we keep getting dragged back to the action. And while the characters are quite reasonable, and have some promise, they don't really get a chance to grow that much. As a result it ends up being entertaining, and quite reasonable, but ultimately lacks anything to make it terribly special.
This leads on the fact that, for all the focusing on action and spectacle, the animation is relatively flat. It might be that it hasn't aged that well, this is not a new title, but I also suspect it wasn't that great to start with. While the core design is nice the coloring lacks impact, the staging of the action lacks style and the motion animation is far from smooth or exciting. The character art, and design, is nice though... although the school girl heroine making herself a fan service compatible outfit half-way through was a bit much. The voices are pretty good, although the dialog is not too deep, and the music is pleasant but unremarkable light vocal stuff.
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Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:27 WST 2009