Back to CodSalmon's Profile CodSalmon's Profile

I went into Kokkoku blind, and I was pleasantly surprised. The story, writing, characters, art and soundtrack are all done well. The premise and worldbuilding of Kokkoku are highly imaginative and executed fairly well. The plot struggles a bit towards the middle when Kokkoku seems to run out of interesting ideas to throw at viewers and resorts to dishing out backstories that didn't feel entirely necessary. The main villain was a bit of a cliche, and I think his character could have been more well-rounded. There is some CGI that I found to look out of place. Otherwise Kokkoku is a good short watch if ... you're looking for a magical realism thriller.

Wolf's Rain is a gorgeous anime with a great soundtrack that will bring you to tears if you are a dog lover. However, the plot leaves a lot to be desired. I think if you have a particular affinity towards dogs and feel like looking at pretty things and crying, this could be an enjoyable series for you.

If you've watched Cowboy Bebop, you'll recognize a lot of the elements here. The soundtrack in both is done by Yoko Kanno. The character designs are similar to Cowboy Bebop. The English Dub has a lot of the same voice actors. The overall art direction and ambiance of ... the show tends to be on the darker side. This might work towards your nostalgia, but the comparison works against Wolf's Rain as it falls short of Cowboy Bebop in every regard.

The art and animation are great. Character designs are diverse, interesting, and play towards tropes without being unoriginal. The character animations are expressive. The action scenes are well done. Environment art is relatively detailed, though much of the show takes place in a barren tundra where there's not much environment to be had at all and that's the only art complaint I could make against Wolf's Rain.

The soundtrack is well done. I'm not a huge fan of the opening song Stray. I find it corny in both tone and lyrical content. Stray sounds like a throwaway Phil Collins song from the 80s, but it's not unbearable and it's easy enough to skip the opening. Unfortunately, and this made me literally laugh out loud, the OVA that wraps the entire series up ends with that song. It felt really out of place to hear this 80s power ballad kick in with the singer yelling "Stray!" after such an emotional ending. Otherwise, the music is well done.

Unfortunately, that's about where Wolf's Rain's strong points come to a close. The plot, writing and characters are all subpar. The plot takes place in a dystopian future and surrounds an artificially created humanoid being named Cheza. Cheza is the key to opening up Paradise, an assumed Utopia reserved only for Wolves. As the world is coming to an end, Nobles, the human elite ruling class of Wolf's Rain, want to use Cheza to open up Paradise for themselves. If all of that sounds nonsensical, it's because it is. I'm usually willing to forgive an unrealistic and unelaborated premise, but something about the way Wolf's Rain presented and worked with this setup didn't work for me. I think there are some interesting themes here that could have been explored further: Why is the world ending? What is Paradise? Is Paradise something you work towards, or is it a place you arrive? Who deserves to find Paradise? Is Paradise the friends we make along the way?

Our main roster of characters is a couple of wolves (who use illusions to appear as humans) who are trying to find Cheza and open Paradise for the Wolves. There are a few other side characters, a divorced couple and an old man who wants to kill wolves for revenge. All of these characters are fairly one-sided and either don't develop or have some minor predictable development. The brooding loner learns to make friends. The young pup learns to take responsibility and fend for himself. Etcetera. Nothing groundbreaking here.

Since our characters' personalities are a bit dull, and the entire plot centers around getting our characters from point A to point B, either to find Cheza or get Cheza wherever Cheza needs to be to open Paradise, our characters don't really have much to talk about. You will hear the main character Kiba say something about going to Paradise a comical number of times. The interactions between our main characters after the first few episodes become uninteresting, with the show mostly instead focused on moving the plot along. And I think this is where Wolf's Rain really falls apart.

There are some episodes that function as a break from the main plot, and I found these to be amongst the most enjoyable. The first 4 episodes, where everything is still being freshly presented to the viewer, those are quite enjoyable. Episodes 5 and 6 have our main group meet another pack of wolves, and those episodes are quite interesting. Then we meet Cheza and Blue and the show takes a turn towards repetition. We now have to endure 2 arcs where our characters wander the tundra to find Cheza and attempt to free her from her captors only to be taken away again. There is another pair of episodes, 19 and 20, where we get an enjoyable break from the plot and meet some new characters. But most of the show is our main characters going from point A to Point B to find Cheza, and the content of these episodes is largely our main characters talking to each other. And they unfortunately don't have much interesting to say and that's the main downfall of Wolf's Rain in my opinion.

In Summary, Wolf's Rain is a beautiful show with a good soundtrack and some moments that will pull at your heartstrings, but the characters and plot aren't terribly interesting. If you like dogs and feel like having a cry, this might be worth a watch.

Geneshaft is a bland, mediocre anime with a decent premise that fails to deliver on almost every category.

First, let's talk about audio. The soundtrack is a sloppy amateurish hodgepodge of cheesy guitar riffs. Unlike other attempts at this like Trigun, the guitar work is simply obnoxious and clashes with the overall aesthetics of the show. There's not much "rock & roll" or action in the series, so I think chunky guitar riffs were a weird choice, and the poor execution makes that more apparent. The English Dub is mostly good but there are a few intolerable performances (like the programmer who talks with a ... puppet) and some slight less grating performances front and center (the main character).

The art and animation is fine, and the characters are varied enough in design that you won't be mixing them up. There is quite a bit of CGI that surprisingly holds up for its time, though I wouldn't call it appealing. Environment details are a bit lacking in detail. Where Genshaft's art is mostly lacking is having any unique style or sense of identity. The only unique piece of art in the show is the mecha that the main character pilots, and frankly it's hideous. Normally in a mecha anime, you can hope for some cool mecha and ship designs and mecha fights, but those are notably absent in Geneshaft. The ship and its interior are unimaginative for the genre. The main enemy for the series is... a giant ring. So the only action you'll see in this show is a poorly-designed ugly CGI mecha shooting a laser at a giant ring. Very disappointing.

The plot is contrived, and the writing is bad. Most of the setting is explained in text in the first few moments of the show, and then repeatedly hammered into you for the next 13 episodes. It seems like you can't go a few minutes without some character talking about DNA. You would think in a world where human DNA has been intentionally altered through Genetic Engineering that either people would be less obsessed with the topic, or at least humans would be profoundly different from each other in a way that creates conflict worth discussing. Instead, the show mostly boils down Genetic Engineering to a linear hierarchy where some people have superior genes to others. There is one notable exception where there are a class of human who suppress their emotions to enhance their reasoning abilities, though it's implied that this is done with drugs rather than genetics so even that detail manages to be disappointing. The topic of Genetic Engineering and the political and cultural world of the show set up so many interesting and easy areas to explore, and Geneshaft manages to neatly avoid doing anything interesting in this department. There is also some light politics in Geneshaft, though this is also very surface level and unoriginal.

Character development is also weakly done. The characters aren't original, memorable, or even endearing. After wrapping up the 13th episode, I felt no attachment or emotion towards anyone in this show. One thing I was pleasantly surprised about is the lack of fan service. You would think in an anime whose premise is humanity maintains a 9:1 female to male ratio that the viewer would be bombarded with fan service, but Geneshaft steers clear of romance and sex almost entirely. The topics are lightly touched upon but ultimately the world of Geneshaft appears to be asexual. I know some viewers will find this disappointing but personally I find fan service and harem anime to be distasteful. All the characters are in spandex so you will see a lot of butt and breast outlines, but as far as anime goes, Geneshaft is very tame.

Geneshaft isn't terrible, but it's not good. It is a tolerable anime that lacks originality and fails to deliver anything interesting to viewers. Watch something else.

The only saving grace of this show is the overall aesthetics and atmosphere. The character designs have that early 00s / late 90s look that makes me feel nostalgic. The characters tend to have this blend of gothic/witchy 80s cyberpunk aesthetics that is very muted and I found that enjoyable. The environment art is typically lacking in detail, but often paints an interesting perspective of what life is like in this world. In general, everything is very muted and dark, which I find enjoyable. There are a lot of scenes with the main characters hanging out in their workplace or at a local restaurant, and ... I really enjoyed those more relaxing scenes.

The animation is minimal, there's nothing here that will impress you. The music is oftentimes awkward and amateurish, but adds to the unique atmosphere of the show in a campy sort of way, though I'm not sure that's intentional. There are frequently abrupt scene transitions that feel unnatural. The voice acting in the dub is well done for the most part, though I feel either the writing is weak or a lot was lost in translation. There's many conversations that feel unnatural, and when exposition occurs about finer aspects of the plot, it sometimes doesn't make sense.

The characters are all a bit one-dimensional and there's not much character development that occurs throughout the show. The plot is a bit of a mess. At times, it really drags. Some lore and exposition is kind of glossed over, while some other points are repeated so much that it feels like the writing either forgot itself, or doesn't respect my intelligence. There are a few moments where bombshells are dropped, and they typically fall flat.

In summary, the aesthetics and ambiance of Witch Hunter Robin is interesting, but in all other regards the show falls flat.