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Aug 9, 2016
Okay so, I decided to watch this show on a whim because I was bored. The main reason I went for just this anime was because I've always been fascinated and interested in dragons and I did expect some sort of deep conflicts between humans and dragons etc. Not that I got anything like that though.
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.
Story 3/10: I'll be honest, the plot felt non-existant. It felt like all the time this show didn't really know what it wanted to be – it's really confusing with a lot of plotholes and things that don't make sense or are just plain stupid. Normally I'm
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the kind of person who doesn't notice plotholes or inconsistencies but this show's "story" was so bad that even I couldn't miss it.
The base premise is that there's a normal guy, with a hottie female sidekick, who end up saving some dragon loli who they need to protect. A few episodes later this dragon loli, named Rose, gets kidnapped by a black dragon guy named Onyx, whose sole purpose seems to be to forcibly marry the reluctant loli so that he'd get more powerful or something. The issue is that he kidnaps the loli in the third episode (if I recall right), gets beaten up and magically disappears for almost the complete show, even though the beginning makes him out to be a great threat and a major plot figure – but guess what? After the bad guy's disappearance you're left watching our main heroes pointlessly hunting after some "Lost Precious" named treasures, or whatever. The thing is that we're never really told why they are after these treasures, what's so important and plot-significant about them (except that they have different rarities and grant special powers) that they'd use up like 7 of 12 episodes on the hunting of those. Those episodes feel pointless to the story and just as a way to introduce more unimportant and boring characters to the cast.
In the final episodes the bad dragon guy shows up again, kidnaps our loli dragon, again, and tries to escape to another country by airplane – aka loli's birth country. The thing is that this time the loli girl has suddenly lost her memory of the main guy, aka her lover, and she's just passively going along with the bad guy until she gets to eat some ICE CREAM THAT REGAINS HER MEMORY. Oh, and to make it even more anticlimactic the big bad dragon guy is defeated by no one less than... the main character's PARENTS, who had no fucking role in the series prior to this, whatsoever. They just suddenly appeared out of nowhere, no explanation, nothing, to save the day and kill off the dragon guy with a one-shot KO attack. Wow. It doesn't even make sense.
This show was simply all over the place and really cringy to watch. You don't get any explanations for what the "society" is either or anything that is constantly mentioned in the show; you're just supposed to know it from the get-go but you don't. It's stupid.
Art 6/10: I don't have much to say about the art. It looked decent and I didn't notice anything that seemed off, except for the CG cars.
Sound 8/10: It feels like a waste that such a poor show had such good music, honestly. The tunes really got the mood right and were really pleasant to listen to. I was always waiting for the music to go on because it was really enjoyable.
Characters 3/10: I'll be honest, most of the cast was either boring, predictable or unbearable. My favorite character was George, the priest guy, who sadly enough only was in like 2 episodes. I'm disappointed that most of the dragons were lolis because I really can't stand loli characters because they tend to be either too annoying, too clingy, think they're adult when they're obviously not or they are just really fucking stupid and not cute at all. Another thing that really bothered me was that all along we get told that the main guy, Ryuji, is a "level 10 breaker" but we never get any kind of explanation on what the heck a breaker is and what their purpose or anything is?? Same thing in the end is that we learn that our main character is not actually human, even though he denies that he'd be anything else, and is actually a Lost Precious or a destroyer or something... but guess what? Yeah, no more explanations about that either and the explanation that is given is terribly fuzzy and just leaves you even more confused and unsatisfied than you already were; it feels like just a half-assed try to make the plot seem like he and his dragon loli can't be together. There were a lot of other stupid reasons too but they all felt like they were made up when the manuscript guy was sitting in the bathroom with watery diarrhea...
Oh and yeah, one thing that really bothered me was the whole "love at first sight" thing the dragons had going on. I mean really, first off it's super cliché and, secondly, how does that even work in reality? Most times when an egg hatches the first thing the kid will see is their mother and yeah, does that mean that all dragon kids would naturally want to fuck their mother because she's normally the first person they'd ever see and thus fall in love with? Incest much? :D Oh and since when did you desire or have any interest in your ultimate husbando/waifu the second you're born – shouldn't you just care about staying alive and getting fed? Just wondering??
Okay, that incest thing was not in Rose's case but I still found it to be a ridiculous and weak try at making our main couple's love legit and, besides, wouldn't love between a human and a dragon be considered bestiality anyway? Oh, and don't forget that they both are underage (approx. 15 years) and have the whole "engage" thing going on... ugh. I'm sorry but their whole "power-up engage" combat skills made me cringe for so many reasons.
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Oh and let's not forget that completely useless schoolgirl who was so shy and always ended up in the shit when she wanted to confess her love to Ryuji. She was so generic that I felt sorry and ashamed just watching her fail all the time; she was so predictable it hurt and of course she doesn't end up with the main character in the end and does nothing actually plot-important. She's just there because every harem rom-com needs a shy schoolgirl who fails miserably and is there to be an awkward love rival.
Enjoyment 4/10: I don't know why I even watched this to the end. I guess I wanted to see what would happen even though I could predict it for the most part. Or I guess I kept hoping that it would get better... and then it didn't. I feel so frustrated because the base for the story had a lot of potential to be a deep and actually interesting story and they just completely wasted it on some poor loli rom-com that can't even explain what's going on in a way that makes sense and feels realistic. This show could have been some deep story about humans and dragons living together after waging war against each other, serious conflicts and all – it could have been so much more than what it was.
Overall 5/10: This anime is a waste of your time. It's okay if you are bored and need dragon lolis in your life. Don't expect any actually cool and powerful mythical dragons or dragon hybrids – expect silly dragons that look like little 10-year-old girls who can't even use their powers nor transform to actual dragons, save for sprouting wings. There are a few funny moments but those are few and far between and most of the time this series is really predictable, fucks up its chances and just makes you feel ashamed for the characters and the excruciatingly poor storywriting.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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May 31, 2016
I just finished watching this old show and thought I'd do a review about it. I know that many others living in Sweden and/or Finland grew up with this series but I'm one of those who missed out on it back in the days and learned about Silver Fang (aka Hopeanuoli) later on, which means that I have no childhood ties or nostalgy connected to it.
I will abbreviate Ginga Nagareboshi Gin as simply GNG in this review.
I will keep this review as spoiler-free as possible and, hopefully, not too long, so don't worry about any major plot reveal.
Story 6/10:
The story is a very basic
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revenge-centered plot (with a touch of betrayal and inner conflicts), nothing too deep and fairly predictable. It starts off with our main dog protagonist and hero, Gin the Akita bear-dog, being born. He quickly gets separated from his mother and becomes grandfather Gohei Takeda's next hunting dog – an old man who's a hunter with a grudge for a very certain bear, Akakabuto. Gohei starts training Gin with abusive methods to make him the ultimate bear-dog and, even though his ways to teach are cruel, they do pay off later.
Shortly after being born Gin gets taken on a hunting trip and watches his father Riki, Gohei's former dog, fighting against Akakabuto and getting thrown off a cliff and, presumably, dying. This memory serves as the main driving force for Gin to go on a journey to gather dogs from all over Japan to fight and take down the monster bear Akakabuto, for the sake of revenge.
The show takes on a very episodic "new recruit of the week" formula, for most of the episodes, while Gin and his gang encounter new dogs that they have to win over to their growing bear-slaying team; often by showing who's the greater male.
But while most of the episodes are fairly predictable they are genuinely enjoyable to watch, even though the subs are horrible and the whole show is resting heavily on manhood and stereotypical ideals and perception of masculinity – mainly when recruiting the dogs and fighting. To give you an idea of how male-centered this show is the hundreds of dogs gathered by Gin are all exclusively males, with the only exception being Cross, who plays the role of the "lone girl but badass-enough-to-be-taken-into-the-guys-group-anyway" – basically Cross is the butch who, at the same time, is a mother figure. Actually, if I recall right you only see two female dogs during the duration of the whole show and that's Gin's mom Fuji and Cross. So yeah, the gender balance is really skewed on this one.
There's a lot of "gather the strongest men!" and "men are like this and like that [insert typically admired masculine quality here], everywhere; you even get the "real men don't cry" cliché and other similarly cringy standards our society has come up with. :) This might be offputting for some watchers and honestly, even though I'm a dude myself, I found it to be too much at times; I just don't like fueling and pressing on gendered stereotypes and expectations – it hurts everyone. But yeah, since GNG is a shounen show from the late 80's you kinda have to cut it some slack. (I just don't really see why female dogs couldn't be good fighters as well? Cross proved several times that she's just as capable as the rest... until she [SPOILER WARNING] got puppies and was tossed aside for the remainder of the show. [SPOILER ENDS])
Art 6/10:
First of all, this is an old show and it's really visible in the animation quality. The dogs are animated fairly well but the humans aren't as detailed. You can tell just by watching that this show hasn't aged all that well but, despite that, it has its old-school charms intact. What bothered me was that there was a lot of reused frames, sometimes flipped, which means that especially during the later episodes, you see the same dogs getting killed over and over again and the same running scenes reused until you get sick of them.
Sound 8/10:
I'm bad at judging voice acting quality but I thought this show was decent, at least considering the time it was made. I watched it with the original Japanese voices and so I can't compare with the dubbed versions out there. I want to say though that the soundtrack was really catchy and memorable and, even though it's just a few distinct songs with different remixes, I really liked them all. I felt pumped up when the "victory theme" started playing and I felt sad when a dog died and the sad song was on. The opening theme also gets stuck in your head.
The sound effects are nothing extraordinary, they sound like old-school sound effects in good as well as in bad.
Characters 8/10:
What makes this series different from your average shounen show is that the main cast are dogs and they fight against evil bears. The bears are not really intriguing because they are simply evil for the sake of being evil and the main antagonist, Akakabuto, is no exception. There isn't much reason given for Akakabuto's rage against both Gohei and Gin, except that because of his blinded eye he got some nerve damage that prevents him from going into hibernation and made him especially aggressive towards any intruders in his territory. But yeah, the bears are really simple, boring, ghastly-looking bears with constant drool on their faces... but the dogs do all have different personalities. Actually, around episode 7 or so, when Gin leaves his owners, that's when the focus shifts and suddenly all the dogs talk and that's when you get to see their true personalities.
Gin is your typical shounen hero and gets the most fleshed out; most of the other cast members (at least the ones getting names) stay pretty one-dimensional. There is everything from the typical honorable ninja dog to the badass, second-in-command, traitorous Dobermann who wants nothing else than to take over the leader post feat. his cowardly servant. There's everything from silly, faithful to serious in the cast and they're all generally likable and you feel for the canines – especially if you're a dog lover like me. It's kinda hard to watch some of them getting killed off...
Enjoyment 9/10:
When I started watching this show I honestly thought I probably wouldn't enjoy it as much as I did. It starts off a bit slow but changes pace as soon as the show shifts to focus on the dogs' point of view. Just be mindful that even though it's often considered a "children's show" GNG is one with a darker theme (read: revenge) and there's a lot of blood, decapitations, eyes popping out of a bear's head, mindless slaughter etc. The blood is animated really cartoony (sometimes a bright semi-transparent neon red/pink!) so it's nothing realistic but yeah, if you can't handle a lot of bloody and whimpering dogs you might want to pass on this show... or perhaps look for the censored version.
Overall 8/10:
It's a surprisingly enjoyable classic show and I found myself with watery eyes more than once. Sure that some things were annoying (bad dubs, abundance of gender clichés, reused frames etc) but the overall feeling I got after finishing GNG was pleasant and satisfied. Even though it's an old show it's still worth the watch!
(please note though that most of my grades are higher than what I would have given GNG had I rated/compared it with the current anime standards; I chose to give it mercy because it was made in the 80's and although it is mediocre in today's standards it's a solid 1980's show)
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Dec 12, 2012
IF YOU ARE A MEGA FAN OF FURUBA ANIME DON'T READ THIS BECAUSE IT MIGHT BURST YOUR PERFECT BUBBLE.
This is my first review so bear with me.
First of, I read the manga before watching the anime. I had kinda high expectations of the anime because everyone seem to be praising it to Heaven and back. I enjoyed the manga (especially the later volumes) so I decided to give the anime a try too... I can say I was quite disappointed.
Okay, I'm a guy and not really a fan of shoujo manga but what originally got me to be interested in Fruits Basket was the zodiac
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touch, it seemed different and promising so I gave it a try after one of my friends told me to read/watch it. I must say I'm really happy I read the manga before watching the anime because if I had watched the anime first I'm sure I would never have bothered to read the manga. The anime is bad in many ways when compared to the manga; the story is modified and some important characters are totally left out for example. But more about that later, now let's get on with the review.
Story 4/10
Basically Fruits Basket is about Tohru Honda, your average happy-go-lucky girl who is like a saint to everyone but thinks nothing about herself. She lives in a tent after her mother died in an accident and later gets to live in her classmate Yuki Sohma's house together with two other Sohma family members - Shigure and Kyo. What Tohru doesn't know at first is that these Sohma family members are cursed with the 12 zodiac animals.
Okay, so the the way the story unfolds itself is rather slow-paced and repetitive. The core message/plot of the story could have been summed up in less episodes, it felt a bit like it was dragging on. Not like there was much of a plot anyway, more like a "slice of life" kind of show with occasional drama and comedy and what-have-you mixed in.
We have Yuki and Kyo fighting all the time, Shigure with his random comedy moments (which failed to amuse me more often than not) and Tohru meeting a new zodiac member in every other episode, learning about their tragic past and then having a mega fluffy conversation with them which then made everything pink and happy unicorns and rainbows again.. rinse and repeat. It gets repetitive and dull really fast, especially when the characters are pretty clichéd. Oh, and actually most of the sad background stories are left half-way unexplained or just simplified and cut off so much that you can't even symphatize with them because there's so many holes left to fill and you basically don't get to know much about anyone; Yuki's and Kyo's pasts are just scraped a little on the surface. It's disappointing especially because Kyo's past and development turns out to be enjoyable in the manga. Speaking of the manga, most of the things that made the manga as good as it was don't even exist in the anime.. okay, I've heard the anime was made before the manga was even finished so the inaccuracies and lack of depth are forgiven a bit. But I can say that the anime follows the manga up to the first 8 volumes rather faithfully, which is good I guess, with some slight extras/changes added. The end is quite different though and in a way left pretty open with a lot of questions still hanging in the air, not to mention that the climax has like 2 episodes devoted to it to build it up but is then so easily solved that it takes the magic out of it and just makes it.. well, 'meh'.
Art 5/10
Not so much to say about the art. It didn't impress me but it didn't make my eyes bleed either. Nothing fancy.. just mediocre. Sometimes the animation felt... well.. lazy; the same frame would be on screen for like 5 seconds or something. I must also say that I found those sparkly-glitter-pink-lovey-dovey scenes to be overused to the point of being cheesy and annoying, heck they were even used during moments they totally did -not- fit to.
Sound 4/10
The opening and endings were too slow-paced for my taste so I skipped them most of the time. About the music in the anime I can't say too much.. nothing great but nothing terribly bad either. I noticed it was the same selected few songs that kept playing during the whole course of 26 episodes.
I found most of the characters voices to be annoying and just not fitting for the characters. Yuki lost what little manliness he had built up in the manga thanks to his disturbingly feminine voice in the anime.. I imagined him sounding clearly masculine but in a sweet/innocent way, not like a total girl. Ugh. And let's not even talk about Momiji... just.. what the hell. Okay, sure he is a shota but he sounds like a goddamn 3-year-old spoiled whiny girl instead of a cute pre-puberty boy, not to mention that I was hoping for him to have a German accent seeing how he was half German in the manga. Son, I am disappoint.
Only Kyo, Shigure, Hatori, Akito, Hanajima, "Yankee girl" and Kazuma sounded right to me. The rest gave me more or less painful mental earbleeds.
Character 5/10
As I mentioned earlier the characters are quite clichéd; we have the cute shota boy, the cool guy with a split personality, the troublemaker loner guy who actually is soft inside, the silent and overly idolized guy with social problems, the egotastic brat who makes you see red and not to mention the girl who is so desperately in love with a guy, who hates her more than cancer, and she punches him to death when he is being honest about not liking her.. yes, I mean Kagura and she must be the epitome of all the things I H.A.T.E in an anime character; I don't wonder one bit why Kyo doesn't want to get married with her.. who the heck would? lol Oh, and let's not forget about those Yuki Fan Club girls who had a whole episode devoted to them.. I wanted to punch each of them in the face so damn hard. That episode I was so tempted to skip, it awakened my puke reflexes.. especially how Yuki was totally oblivious to their behaviour and even treated that selfish bitch with kindness. Needless to say most of the characters I found annoying instead of likable because they were so plain, exaggerated, clichéd, had a lack of deep or unique personality. Only Kyo, Hatori and Kazuma I found likable all through the show, the rest were more or less a nuisance.
6/10 Enjoyment
I watched this anime in two days but I'm not sure did I watch it that fast because I wanted it to end already or why. Honestly most of the episodes felt like repeats of each other with little new to add to the basket. I seriously wanted to like this anime more than I did (mostly because the manga left a good impression on me) but I just found it more mind-numbingly dull and lacking than exciting. Sometimes it felt like I was wasting my time but luckily a few episodes were actually good too, like the one with Hatori's past. Oh, and the scene when Ayame turns into a snake and gets lasso'd by mistake into the sea made me crack up; that was one of the few times the attempted humour actually rubbed me the right way. Okay, occasionally Shigure was funny but he didn't save the (often badly placed) mass flooding of failed attempts at humour which were more embarrassing than entertaining due to trying too hard to be funny but falling flat on their face instead. The "I AM SO SORRY OHMAIGAWD" hot spring kimono lady was funny a few times too but that's about it.
5/10 Overall
The anime was quite a letdown for me personally. I would not recommend watching it unless you haven't read the manga or are the sort of person who likes cotton candy fluffy shoujo with a girl who radiates light with her presence.. and magically heals all past scars of other half-strangers with just a few sentences. If you are interested in Fruits Basket, READ THE MANGA INSTEAD. I promise, it is much better! It makes more sense, actually is enjoyable (especially when the story gets going for real) and it also fills in the many things left unexplained properly in the anime. The anime is quite the disgrace in my eyes, I don't understand why it has so high scores.. but oh well, whatever floats your boat I guess. People are free to like and enjoy what they want but Fruits Basket anime sure wasn't my piece of cake.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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