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May 22, 2011
ONCE AGAIN, LOOK OUT FOR SPOILERS.
Where do I begin? I was a bit reluctant to watch this series. When I was halfway through Fullmetal Alchemist, early last year, someone told me they were doing a new show more faithful to the manga. And I remember thinking ‘Crap, so why am I even bothering with this version?’. But I finished it, completed it with The Conqueror of Shambala and felt mildly satisfied. The series were brilliant apart from the eyebrow raising ending and the questionable movie plot. Only now that I’ve finished Brotherhood can I realize how far-fetched some arcs were but to each their own:
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Fullmetal Alchemist was a good achievement, but it has to be considered as something with a life of it’s own, unattached to Arakawa-sensei’s work. A bit like Rurouni Kenshin:Seisohen: good work, but if you end up thinking about Watsuki-san’s work your stomach will turn over. But I was still undecided whether to watch this or not until some brilliant opportunity came up: final exams. Is there a better time to watch a 64 episode long series? I highly doubt it (as a matter of fact note only, I did pretty well on the exams, so no worries).
The main plot is very much like Fullmetal Alchemist‘s: Edward and Alphonse Elric are the sons of renowned alchemist Van Hohenheim and Trisha Elric. When their father leaves the house, Trisha slowly perishes and the boys try to resurrect her through alchemy, with disastrous consequences. Ed loses his leg and gives up his arm in order to retrieve Alphonse’s soul, attaching it to a suit of armour. The brothers embark on a journey through alchemy to learn ways of getting their bodies back, finding themselves in a situation they didn’t ask to be in but is closer to their hearts than they think.
However, the story changes drastically after Nina and Dr. Tucker’s arc, following the original work instead of making-up a story of its own. And I’m glad it did, because Tucker annoyed me incredibly in Fullmetal Alchemist. Brotherhood doesn’t include that questionable relationship between Scar and Lust, the far-fetched arc with Izumi’s son being an Homunculi with Ed’s arm and the whole thing about Envy being Ed and Al’s brother. Here, the Homunculi are simply Homunculi with no sappy past stories: although some of them have their own little personal tragedies, like Greed and, a favourite of mine, Envy, a character I’m sure everyone hated at first but actually felt sorry for in the end. This is another strong point in Brotherhood: the whole myriad of secondary characters that you can’t help but like. In fact, there isn’t a single character I didn’t like in the end, apart from Wrath who was just plain boring. Each character has their own purposes for fighting, something bigger than themselves moving them and each has a strong characteristic that makes them unique, whether it’s the little sparkles that float around Armstrong all the time (yes, they’re here too!) or Ling Yao’s constant hunger.
As for the main characters, Edward and Alphonse, they also endeavour on a physical and psychological journey that questions their sense of right and wrong and opens their eyes to what people can do as means to achieve a bigger end; in this case, something terrible personal wish. All the defects of men are here, personified in the Homunculi and in humans as well: vanity, ambition, selfishness, jealousy, envy. I think vanity and selfishness, thinking about what you want regardless of the others, are the most proeminent. If it weren’t for them, none of the characters would be in the mess they find themselves in. I think Alphonse develops more than Edward. He’s a personal favourite of mine, so I may be defending him, but he changes from a shy kid who lived in his brother’s shadow to a selfless albeit courageous young man, and this we can see when he decides to leave his body behind for a little while longer. He had everything he always wanted right in front of him, but someone else needed him most. It must’ve been a really tough decision not to be taken lightly. As for Edward, and I do like him as well, he evolves from a kid who thought he owned the world to someone who realizes the world is made up of ugly truths, but he doesn’t really apply this knowledge on himself. Sure, his final decision is very courageous as well, but I saw more maturity in Alphonse than in him. But then again, since Alphonse is one of my favourite characters, I might be biased. Tell me your opinions!
This show also brings Hohenheim to light, and he became another favourite of mine. Instead of the evil guy who makes Homunculi out of his offspring, we have a severly misunderstood man who craves for his sons acceptance and who, basically, started it all. He feels on his shoulders the responsibility to end it as well, alone; to his astonishment, he meets his sons along the way and their broken relationship is put to the test, to heart warming results. I also liked to see how Hohenheim and Edward are alike, not only in looks, as you will see on the photo below, but in attitude either: Ed hates being called small, Hohenheim hated being called stupid. They both reacted exactly the same way. The way they brag is also identical. It’s really a like father, like son story.
In the end, the good guys win and get everything they wanted but with a bittersweet touch. A very bittersweet touch. You will cry your eyes out in the end, this I guarantee. It’s really cathartic… in a way, it embodies everything Fullmetal Alchemist failed to bring.
Brotherhood is a nearly perfect show. The animation is superb (the fight scenes are so amazingly fluid they will make you want more and more), the soundtrack is magnificent and especially haunting in the most emotional scenes (especially in the final episodes) and you know the best thing? No fillers at all. It’s just plot moving forward episode after episode. I might just add something I think is very important here: the technical aspects of the show are impecable, like I just said, but this is one of those cases where the characters make the story. They simply shine and, in my sky, they will do so for a very long time.
[for more reviews, figures and photos of this article tune into http://ritsuinfigureland.wordpress.com!]
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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May 15, 2011
(Taken from my blog at http://ritsuinfigureland.wordpress.com)
Mars, by Souryou Fuyumi, ran from 1996 to 2000, which justifies it’s dated (yet astoundingly beautiful) drawing style.
Like I’m never tiring of saying, all my posts contain spoilers. You were warned.
Story: Aso Kira is a very shy teenager who rarely speaks to anyone and prefers keeping to herself doing what sets her free – drawing, which she is exceptionally good at. One day, while drawing at a park, she’s intercepted by Kashino Rei who asks her for directions. She draws him a map without saying a single word and walks away. She knows about Rei: he’s the best-looking guy at
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school and a rebel of sorts, passionate about motorcycles and not giving a damn about anything or anyone. Her total opposite, the one who could intimidate her the most. As for Rei, he never noticed Kira before but something about the way she gave him the map arose some curiosity in him – especially the image drawn on the back of the sheet: that of a mother holding a child. They meet at school the next day and Rei is quite persistent in talking to Kira. She slowly opens up to him and gathers up all of her courage to ask him to model for her. He accepts. And so these two complete opposites start getting closer and closer together, learning more about each other, caring for each other and realizing that sometimes what we need is someone different from us to complete what we’re lacking. The story follows the couple’s development as they learn about each other’s personal tragedies and how they choose to cope with them and with the world around them.
Kashino Rei: Rei is a twin. His brother, Kashino Sei, comitted suicide when they were attending junior high and Rei never stopped blaming himself for what happened. Little does he know about his twin’s true identity, which Kira slowly starts to comprehend. The reasons for Rei’s guilt are gently shown to the reader (and to Kira): either the fact that he took his brother’s girlfriend from him, the fact that he was always defending Sei from his bullies making Sei feel weak or, above all, the fact that he told Sei that their father wasn’t their real father. But the real truth is something completely different, something relating to Sei’s true self, which is a surprise to everyone. This is his personal tragedy. After his brother died he turned more of a rebel, leaving his father’s safe house to live alone in squalid conditions and dedicating himself to racing, his biggest passion, something he devotes himself to almost recklessly – that is, until he meets Kira. Kira tames the rebel in him, bringing him back to life and to life’s responsibilites. Making him want to feel responsible for someone for the first time after Sei’s death. Apart from all the guilt, Rei also has to deal with his feelings towards his ex-girlfriend, the one he took from Sei, who still has feelings for him and keeps stalking him wherever he goes. This plot occupies several chapters, with Rei trying to decide between past and present, real and fantasy.
Aso Kira: After Rei’s past is revealed and dealt with, Kira’s darkest secret comes to life. Rei had always found it very strange how she coiled away from him when he kissed her more passionately, or the way she always ran away from sex, despite telling him he loved him all the time and always being there for him. One day he decides to test if his theories are correct and indeed they are: Kira was raped as a child by her stepfather and this is what made her shut herself from the world all this time, pouring her soul on her drawings. Kira tells Rei that her stepfather doesn’t live with them anymore but the minute she says this he returns home, telling Kira’s mum that he’s all different now and promising economical stability to their family, which Kira’s mum gladly accepts. Rei feels infuriated by Kira’s passive attitude right after her mother chose stability over her daughter’s safety and even more so with Kira’s naïvety in believing that her stepfather really had changed. So he breaks up with her which is the worst thing he could do, but well, this is a dramatic manga so there had to be some sort of situation like this. Luckily the break-up is short and serves to show Rei how deeply he loves Kira and how he can’t go back to the one-night-stand way of life he led before. And all in good time, since Kira’s stepfather tries to abuse her again. She runs away from home, moves in with Rei, they finally have sex and Kira discovers a whole new way of life.
This is melodramatic manga at its best. In fact, I think Mars is everything NANA wanted to be but failed at. And I’m a hardcore NANA fan, so it must really mean something if I’m saying something like this. The difference is obvious: Mars knows where to stop the tragedy. Sure, that last episode was a bit too unecessary but since it all ended well and contributed to move the story even further it doesn’t make much damage. With NANA, Yazawa didn’t know where to stop. The tragedy kept coming, and coming, and coming, never stopping, and it has now come to a point where I truly believe she doesn’t know what to do anymore. I know she had her health issues, but she’s been working on song lyrics for a while now, leaving NANA completely behind. So yes, I really feel she does’t know what to do with the plot she created anymore, which is a shame. I might be wrong. I want to be wrong. But Mars completely wins over simply because of this. There’s nothing unecessary. Everything’s in its right amount. Drama, romance, tension, everything. And guess what, Yazawa? Everyone does live happily ever after.
I give this a 10/10. It’s undoubtedly a masterpiece I strongly recommend.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Mar 27, 2011
I confess I only got into Shiki because someone told me Buck-Tick was doing the opening. Guilty! But I didn't regret it, the show is tremendously good. Still in the opening/ending topic, I hated the second opening because it was too... dance-ish, it had nothing to do with the feel of the series like Kuchizuke had. The second ending was nice (Buck-Tick nice ^^) but it didn't have much impact either. So, moving on.
The story is as follows: we're in a village cut off from the outer world, nested in the mountains. Its people live their ordinary lives with joy and without ambition, perfectly happy
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with the way things are and doing their best to avoid unusual situations. Enter Shimizu Megumi, a flashy highschool girl who wants nothing else than to escape her village and aim high, live a less-than-ordinary life. She is curious about the new family that moved in, the Kirishiki: a strange looking couple with their equally strange looking daughter and a tall, muscly guy with blue hair and dog ears (which reminds me that Shiki has the craziest hairstyles ever). Enter Natsuno Yuuki, the guy on whom Megumi has a huge crush on - almost on the verge of stalking. A guy who is also bored with his life and blames his parents for moving in this quiet village. One night, Megumi disappears and is found the following day looking faint and with strange bite marks on her neck. She eventually dies. Soon after, Natsuno starts feeling watched and starts feeling like maybe Megumi is still around... while the village doctor, Ozaki Toshio, blames her death - and the following ones - on some sort of strange epidemic until too much starts, eventually, being too much. And all those deaths have some sort of link to the Kirishiki household. So, what is happening, exactly?
Shiki brought back what true vampirism is. There is none of the romanticism nowadays associated with vampires. There is no forbidden love story. It's just a pure fight for the race's survival: human and vampire races, that is. The first episodes are a bit slow on the uptake, I admit, but from episode 13 on-wards it's a gore and thrill fest. It also focuses on a lot of interesting issues like who is the outsider in the end, why is it so terrible to fight for your own survival and it even adds some religion in the mix, personified by Muroi Seishin, son of the village Head Priest, who always felt trapped and in denial regarding succeeding his father.
Briefly: the artwork was a bit on the bad side and I must refer the hairstyles once again. The characters were really well written and I liked the brief flashbacks, specially Kirishiki Chizuru's - I ended up feeling a bit sorry for her. But the ones who shine the most are, obviously, Ozaki Toshio, the bad-ass doctor, Natsuno Yuuki, who fought evil from the inside, Kirishiki Sunako, the tortured woman forever trapped in a child's body and, I have to say this, Matou Tohru, who embodied the whole tragedy of being reborn into a life of murder without having a choice.
It all comes down to the whole good versus evil theme, in the end. What is considered good and what is considered evil? Like Atsushi-san's father said before attempting to strike down Sunako, he's got his morals and he was educated to distinguish what was good and what was evil and he used it as a justification for his actions. In this sense, we can say someone put it in his head and, due to the isolated environment he grew up in, he didn't feel the need to question it. But what's interesting is this: from the humans point of view, the vampires are evil because they kill their race mercilessly. But from the vampire point of view, the humans are the evil ones because they hunt down their race and empale them brutally, when the only thing they were trying to do was to survive: they don't want to kill humans, they have to. Humans don't have to kill vampires, in the other hand. They do because the moral code they grew up in tells them to: because vampires aren't creatures of God, because they're not from this world, because they attacked their loved ones. Either of these is understandable, I'm not taking sides. I just think Shiki brought an interesting perspective to the whole thing. Most heartbreaking of all was the whole "I didn't ask to rise into this life" issue.
I give this show an 8/10. It's really, really good, probably the best of its season. I won't give it a 10 because I put the artwork in some consideration while ranking a show and this one didn't deliver much, although the gore scenes were really gruesome. And the ending wasn't satisfactory either: endings aren't supposed to raise more questions, like this one did. It was a true open-ending, and I don't like open-endings. The soundtrack is also amazing. Thrilling and heartbreaking.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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