My personal view on anime, as it is become a visible media niche in the world. Just like any other media, it has its share of pukes and good ones....this is my view on it. Whimsical? Informative? Overly serious? Too silly? Why the hell am I still watching anime? Thoughts like this runs through my mind here.
Frankly, this series managed to hook me. Very interesting use of time travel and paradoxes though the male lead (Hajime) is annoying me with his pettiness: blusterous, possessive and tantrum prone to the max.
It is known that Kobayashi (the mangaka) tends to self insert in the stories so I wonder if Shades is him. This series is also quite liberal with fan service with so many female characters in the story.
Character wise it is pretty normal but it is use of special powers like matter manipulation and time travel that intrigues me to the potential of the story here. With Shinbo style of imagery is absent most of the 1st episode (the ED vid is his trademark though), the angles were interesting enough to accentuate the situation.
Overall, it is an above average start so far. Will follow it to see where the story goes to.
CoMix Wave, people who behind great anime movies like 5cm and Beyond the Clouds is working on this anime feature now. So far only few screenshots available and no PVs is out yet. Aya Hirano is featured as main VA for the movie, AFAIK.
From the screenshots I can feel it is a psychedelic show with vibrant usage of colours. Not traditional "moe" design can be seen and definitely it feels raw and edgy too.
The synopsis is: "The Asylum Session's story follows the trials and coming-of-age of teenaged boys and girls in the distant future. In this era, the development of civilization has stopped and even declined. Hiyoko is a runaway girl who goes to live in tents with other people at a stadium nicknamed "Asylum". There, she meets Akira, a leader of a band of street children. Profiteering police want to tear down the stadium, so its denizens create a street culture event called "The Asylum Session" to counter those plans."
Sounds like a story of Rio slums on grander scale and corruption. Interestingly Shinchiro Watanabe just recently concluded Michiko and Hatchin also set in Rio slums too. The movie will be coming at July 2009.
Made in 1934, sadly there is no sound to accompany this piece of history. Typical propaganda interwar flick, perhaps shown in cinema before main feature. The bears were Russians, monkeys were Japanese in anthropomorphism fashion. It can gleaned readily that Japanese view on Russians were not flattering(afterall, Imperial Japan defeated Russians in 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War) and this is year that Japanese militarism already superseded civilian government which finally took a disastrous route to Pacific War.
I watch this episode and seriously, Bee Train should stop making gunslinger animes. Their idea of good gunfighting series is a myth of pistol with skirts overwhelm everything else (which we saw reached an orgasmic like ecstasy in Madlax). Just like how they destroy excellent manga Blade of Immortal with insipid series, they took away the essence of Phantom story: grittiness and unrelenting violence which hooked me to play the VN (visual novel) in 1st place. Violence is what drives and shock the dramatis personae in any plot to push themselves to final conclusion of story, not limp like hint of violence (not as bad as Noir)that is seem to be stylized in Phantom. This is like giving a steak that is not cooked at all and call it well done. The character redesign is okay but Reiji lacks the intense aloofness that makes his character so fascinating. Ein is easy, she is basically Kirika (Noir) repackaged for this series. There is no chemistry between these 2 in this series. Hardly. Dr Scythe lacks that tinge of madness in this anime too. Bee Train took out the hard broiled edge from almost everyone and make them feel out of sync with the world role they supposed to be. Also for action scenes, Bee Train did not do proper research to make scene authentic as possible. A noted scene not make sense: Ein kneeing Zwei with left side then she do palm strike with left hand which violates the human physiology sense. How the hell she can generate any power with her palm strike that send a guy who is at least 10 kg heavier than her tumbling back like the scene shown? It looks like she is dancing which what I think the anime guys trying to go for but it just looks odd. Very odd for action sequencing.
The only good thing about this series is haunting OP by KOKIA. The ending sounds like crap and out of place with the feel of the story supposed to evoke.
