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Oct 18, 2015
The Vision of Escaflowne is a lesson in a fine art. Taking you through this lesson, is a man by the name of Allen Schezar. Allen Schezar is a certified hunk, gold medalist, PhD in hunkology. This guy knows how to be a hunk and in The Vision of Escaflowne, he takes you through all the important steps on how you at home can be your very own hunk.
Now while at surface level, it may seem that being a hunk is all about good looks. That’s obviously the first step, and it’s not a step that Allen skips out on. This is entry level
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stuff of course, but just because it’s entry level, doesn’t mean you’ll get it perfect. In fact, it’s a common rookie mistake to assume that chicks will dig long, tan and handsome. This is not the case. Allen has discovered through years of various flings with princesses that what chicks dig the most is, in fact, 6 foot tall guys with luscious blond locks and a knighthood. They like a little danger, but not too much. They also like a little financial security, but again, not too much.
Now throughout Escaflowne, we see Allen putting a good deal of his skills to the test in an attempt to woo a high-schooler from a foreign planet and a princess on the side just in case, through some enormous miscalculation, he cannot win the heart of the girl easily 10 years younger than him. Near the start of the series, Allen slips in a little cover for her (forgot to mention the high-school girl’s name is Hitomi, not that it’s important, but for distinction) presence at his outpost that she’s a girlfriend of his and things get a little hot under the collar. Now, this is a very important scene to note, as this is Allen showing just how adept he is at capitalising on rare situations to plant the seed in the head of the girl that perhaps, he’s just the right hunk for her. This is just one of many examples where Allen flexes his astute adlib abilities, but more on that later.
Unfortunately for Hitomi, Allen is not the only hunk competing behind the scenes in the great hunk-royale that is Escaflowne. When she is abducted/transported to the planet Gaea in the presence of our intermediate level hunk (also referred to interchangeably as a jack-hunk or a learner-hunk), Van Fanel, who we’ll talk a little more about after this, she leaves behind another hunk whom she was about to make her personal hunk before her untimely departure. So, already Allen is having to compete unbeknownst with this other hunk in a psychological battle right from the beginning, which is nothing to sneeze at for even the most advanced ace-hunk like Allen. But at the same time, Allen must also do battle with Van Fanel, who takes on the role of Hitomi’s side-hunk.
Van takes an interesting approach to hunking, though he may not look it, he certainly knows how to hold his own against Allen. For a start, Van is a king, so Allen’s in some pretty big trouble. Even though he may not be as good a sword-fighter as Allen, he’s getting there, which is almost as interesting for chicks as actually being top trump. Van also has black hair, which you know means he’s incredibly gifted and is passionate about his cause. He’s also within age range, which adds an interesting flavour aaaaaaaaaaand he has a catgirl with pink hair clinging on. Now while the catgirl might not initially appear to have anything to do with it, you’ve got to realise that it adds a sense of game to it for Hitomi, if she wants this hunk, she’s gotta work for him.
BUT WAIT! It may look like Allen’s out of the game at this point, but not to worry as we’re introduced to his side-chick, Millerna and she’s not a catgirl, no, even better: she’s a princess. That’s like, top-tier competition for a schoolgirl.
While it may appear that there’s a story, themes and a plethora of other characters running through Escaflowne, it’s important to note that it’s all just a cover for the hunk-royale. There are several other hunks that make for an interesting clash of the hunks that appear throughout the story such as Dryden and Folken, but how do they fit into the hunk-off? Well, I’ve got to leave some surprises right, just like I’m not going to reveal who wins the hunk-off at the end, but just know it’s a close one!
Overall, I think Allen Schezar is a man who knows his art. For the entirety of the show, he is smooth af and he knows how to slip in and score a couple of extra points when nobody’s paying attention. I recommend this show to anyone who is further interesting in the study of hunkology, or is aspiring to be a hunk themselves. I think Escaflowne is even a good watch for those who are already ace-hunks or king-hunks because I think Allen has a lot to offer to help sharpen your skills.
Side note, Yoko Kanno is a genius kthnxbye!!! :]
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 30, 2015
Art, music and storytelling are all mediums that simply on their own, assuming they are done effectively, have the ability to illicit strong emotional responses and feelings from the people observing them. That’s just on their own, when combined, as is the case with anime, it can be stunning; highly inspirational, heart-warming (or breaking). It can be an experience that changes your life even.
To give this rather general statement some context, Clannad uses all of these things together, of course it does, it’s an anime. What I didn’t state in the above paragraph, is that when the execution of these components is not in harmony
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i.e. the art is amazing, the music is brilliant, but the storytelling is barely there, it ends up hurting the entire product. While I understand that art is very much a huge component in anime, it is not more important than the story it exists to represent. That’s what lets Clannad down in the end, it’s a high budget project with a pretty above average music score, but the story just isn’t there. It’s not, it’s really not.
Clannad sets you up from the beginning with a pretty generous amount of central characters, most of whom contribute to the long list of things about Clannad that just aren’t good enough. It pretty much fits the bill of your traditional harem set up, you have a central male lead and a bunch of girls who he gets to spend time with and get to know. But here’s the thing: what you end up with is a bunch of guns that are never fired, they’re just shown. The lead male Tomoya is very bland and very typical of the lead male character in this type of show. He’s a delinquent, he thinks his life’s not too great, he makes friends along the way (i.e. every single one of the girls) because friendship is this powerful thing that’s almost unstoppable (which is the extent of the depth the show pushes by the way) etc.
The rest of the characters are just as bad, if not worse. None of the characters behave, or sound, like the age range they’re supposed to be and very little of the character interaction is realistic. Two of the characters, Fuuko and Kotomi, exhibit behaviour reminiscent of high functioning autistics, when it’s pretty clear that’s not the intention the writer’s had going, making their characters very jarring and hard to tolerate. It’s also worthy of note that once Fuuko’s arc ends, she occasionally pops in every now and then as what seems like the world’s worst deus ex machina, but just ends up being a “cutesy” little incident that ends up killing mood and momentum. Nagisa, the main focus of the romance, is your typically plain, overly nice girl who doesn’t have a lot of self-confidence who grows as the show progresses thanks to all her new friends. Then there’s two twins, Kyou and Ryou, Kyou is just a cookie cutter Tsundere and Ryou, ironically considering her twin character, shows the most dynamic in her character out of all of them, but is mostly written out as a side character (except when she, like pretty much all the other girls, is shown to have romantic feelings for Tomoya). Tomoyo pretty much fits in the Kuudere shell for the most part and Sunohara is the comic relief side-kick.
Watching Clannad is like playing poker at a table where everyone has their cards turned face up except for you, but everyone else wants you to flip your cards over as well. You know that’s not how poker is meant to be played, but it’s a really easy way to play it. There’s no surprises, no twists coming out of left-field and there’s no fun. It’s not immediately obvious at the start when all the characters are still being introduced, but once the story kicks in, it becomes pretty obvious what Clannad is trying to do. Every aspect of the story is so blatantly obvious and simple, so are it’s very shameless attempts to tug at your heart strings. The score comes in handy here, since it’s so well composed, never particularly cheesy, never over the top, nice and subtle and perfect at setting the mood the images and words before you are trying to accomplish. It’s pretty easy to get into it that way and that’s exactly why Clannad fails at a story. It’s entirely mechanical, story writing 101. Episode 14 is the best example of what I’m talking about, everything that you think is going to happen happens and in the exact way and order you think it’s going to happen in.
Often the story resorts to sudden changes in mood, shoehorning in an overly dramatic backstory to certain characters or incidents in the characters’ lives like “then X was involved in a traffic accident” or “then my X tried to kill themselves” and it all boils back down to “friendship is strong enough to get through anything”. Tomoya’s rocky relationship with his father is like this as well. The moment it’s introduced, it makes you go “oh, that’s going to be his thing isn’t it?” not “damn, that’s unfortunate, it’ll be interesting to see where this goes”. Everything is so obvious and so simple and yet instead of coming across as fun and whimsical and a little light-hearted, it comes across as contrived and boring. The show then has the audacity to have a go at trying its hand at a proper romance angle. Unfortunately, it leaves it far too late and plays itself out excruciatingly slowly while shoehorning in even more unnecessary, uninspiring and predictably boring sob stories. It doesn’t improve in any way for the entirety of its running time, it doesn’t get sadder, it get’s unreasonable.
For nearly the entirety of its running time, Clannad tries to cover up its asinine story writing with decent, high budget animation, though not as remarkably as past Key/Kyoto collaborations, namely Air; clever scoring and jarring mood transitions that give it a “don’t take me seriously, but actually do take me seriously” mentality. If you are looking for a refreshing change in the slice of life genre, you won’t find it here. If you’re looking for a nice, heart-warming, well written romance story, try elsewhere. Clannad is a high budget anime, promising big but delivering clunky scenes, embarrassingly bad characters, ridiculous dialogue and a whole lot of disappointment.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jun 12, 2015
We've all seen Fullmetal Alchemist, hell, your grandma secretly watches it. The characters in FMA were some of the most well developed characters I've ever seen, but what was up with Scar? Driven by vengeance, his past draped in shadows. Sure, we get to learn a lot about him as the show progressed, but there was always something missing I felt.
Well, if you felt this way as well, ponder no longer because Jormungand sheds a little light on his past. What was scar's actual name? Well, it was Jonathan Mar as it turns out (Jonah for short) and he had a series of adventures with
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a young arms dealer named Koko Hekmatyr and her gang of pals.
Now, I've heard a lot of tales about Jormungand, so I grabbed a couple volumes of the manga, as you do. It was actually really difficult to follow in manga format guys, I'm gonna advise that you just don't start there and just jump right into the anime because it's actually a fluid story. Oh sorry, I mean several stories, since it's one of those episodical tales.
I've seen that this website likes to anally divide their reviews into specific sections for each aspect of the show, so I'll do that =]
Story:
Oh boy, what a tale! I mean, I haven't actually finished it yet, I'm about 9 episodes in but that's more than enough to form an informed opinion on something don't you think? Oh you do! Great, so do I! Anyway where was I? Right, story. Ok, so nearly every episode (sometime's they're two parters) is basically its own thing so if you have a very brief attention span, there's a bonus. The gist of this is it's emulating Cowboy Bebob through Black Lagoon, which isn't a bad thing really because I'll be damned if it didn't do it in it's own little way. I wont spoil the ending (I can't, I haven't seen it XDDDD). People say this is super realistic and I guess they're right because silicon breasts are pretty realistic too.
Art:
It looks pretty good, the animation itself isn't anything mind blowing. It's a little cheesy and the backgrounds aren't particularly interesting but hey it gets the job done. Character design's a little hit or miss, Scar looks almost exactly like he does in FMA (albeit without the scar or tats yet lol) however there are like three characters that look exactly the same (ugo and wiley and that south african dude that chills with Minami are pretty much interchangable) also there are several female characters that are just variations of each other but I'm just grasping at straws tbh.
Sound:
Lmao I keep seeing all these comments about the soundtrack like "Omg it's so varied, I love it, one of the best anime soundtracks ever haha lol" like wtf is wrong with you? Did you randomly decide while you were watching this that "Oh, you know what? I might actually listen to the music in the background and see what it's like, haven't done that before tbh smae" and then you went "Omg so varied, best anime soundtrack ever!" it's the only one you've heard though! Basically what I'm trying to say is the soundtrack is horrid, varied sure, but variety doesn't equal quality lol y'all need to listen to more soundtracks. Though in saying that I'll be damned if the opening theme doesn't go hard I mean damn, that's my jam m/ pretty good imo tbh.
Character:
Scar's pretty interesting here, easy to see how he developed into the radical ishvalist we know him as today. I actually in all honesty thought that the characters in this show (the main ones anyway, the side characters or one off characters actually sucked a fair bit of willy) were actually it's selling point, Valmet was great lovely to see some lgbt pride in anime amirite? Also I love how it tries to be all like "the main characters are super likable and relatable, they are not savage killing machines but real people with real sadboy emotions. These other guys though, oh no, they're disgusting pigs!" like stfu who are you trying to kid? But anyway I'm missing out the best part, you could watch this entire thing just for Koko Hekmatyr imo tbh.
Koko Hekmatyr:
You know what idgaf this chick needs her own paragraph I mean god damn I'd wife that shit hard. I'd approach her one day you know, she's doing her thing, I'm doing my thing you know how it do and I'mma be like "Hey how you doing, I just thought you were really cute can we go grab a drink? *tips trilby*" and she'll be all like "Sure, just gotta go make some illegal money and what not brb" you know, all the usual stuff. You know, we'll date for a few years and then when I feel the time is right I'm gonna be like "Koko, tbh will you marry me?" and she'll say "smae tbh" then we'll be married. Wont be having kids straight away you know, she's got to sell weapons and stuff full time, it's not an easy job she doesn't have time to be looking after kids. Neither do I, I've gotta be watching Jormungand, super important stuff. Anyway you can't deny this chick's a total qt be honest, you'd wife that too but too bad cause she's mine and we're happy together.
Overall:
Overall I thought that this was relatively enjoyable, nothing to tell your dad about or anything. It's immensely corny and you may as well just watch Black Lagoon which is far better but hey, it's your life.
It's better than it's manga at least.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jun 4, 2015
There are a tonne of factors to what kind of anime they like, or how much someone enjoys an anime and why they like it. For some people it’s the story, a lot of people enjoy anime for its artistic (visual specifically) merits. How the characters interact, what kind of characters they are and what kind of adventures they have. Some people enjoy their anime with an air of mystery and complexity, something a little darker, edgier, something that makes you think or something that makes you feel.
Gilgamesh contains absolutely none of this. In a sense it’s good at catching you by surprise in that
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sense since you don’t get what you’re expecting to get going into it; because you actually expect it to deliver something, but it doesn’t. If there is one thing positive that I took from Gilgamesh it’s that you can never judge a book by its cover, or its premise. Because Gilgamesh actually does have an allure to its art and it does have an interesting set up. Because of a scientific catastrophe, the sky has become a mirror, electronic media is no longer functioning and children born after the event have strange psycho-kinetic abilities. It sounds really interesting. However from the very first episode, it never appears to be a very riveting tale, everything from the acting, the soundtrack, the colour palate and the animation itself do absolutely nothing.
While the acting is actually the shows strongest point for the most part, that’s saying very little, because everything else is so incredibly bad. Immediately, the most striking feature of the show is its bland and grey colour and atmosphere (with the occasional splash of red, livid blue, brown and yellow, which might I add are all very depthless in tone). While this atmosphere is kind of cool in the beginning, it gets tired by about the third episode and it never gets any more exciting.
The animation and the character design is ghastly. Nearly all of the characters have these odd fish faces and they move very stiffly and plainly. You’d expect that there’d be all these exciting fights between the psycho-kinetic kids, throwing each other about with their minds, hurling energy at each other in big, bloody and moving mind-brawls. The Gilgamesh kids even have a transformation that is seldom ever used (and looks super goofy), but here’s the deal. There are quite a few fights sure, but 90% of them is just throwing up energy shields and teleporting, with the villains usually retreating after a couple of attacks. The animation is very lazy, the voice acting and sfx are half-assed and the fights add absolutely nothing to the show. They don’t make it any more interesting or exciting, they’re just there. I’m not going to say an awful lot about the soundtrack, since I can say it all very briefly here: it’s hilariously cheesy and bad, that’s all you need to know about that. You’ll barely even notice it’s playing (the opening theme is also awful and does not set the show up at all).
So the art and sound is super bad, how about the story and the characters involved? Nope, just as bad, if not worse. The biggest offenders are the villains, who have a vaguely explained motives and a goal that doesn’t actually end up achieving anything. Oh, also they don’t seem to actually have any motive aside from wrecking the only chance of returning the planet to normal for nearly two thirds of the entire show (SPOILER! And since they actually manage to accomplish this, the first half of the show builds up to nothing and then fizzles out SPOILER!). most of this shows story is just why? Why are they doing this? Why do they want this? Why does the main character have a romantic interest in his older sister? Wait… hold up. Yes, it is apparent that the main character is in love with his sister and if this was not the intention, the real intention was poorly conveyed. He even turns down another love interest just to pursue his sister. (SPOILER! Oh no, but it’s ok because we later find out that he’s a clone of their father, so she’s more genetically his daughter rather than his sister, so that makes it better since she looks a lot like their mother. Hold up… does that make it better? I don’t think it does, no matter how you look at it, they’re either brother and sister or father and daughter SPOILER!). The characters are all just as boring as the art and animation. Clingy younger brother, over bearing older sister, cool older male supporting role, comic relief male supporting role, love interest female supporting role, androgynous character, mysterious anti-hero that slowly becomes likeable, cold adult character, personality-less cronies; and that’s all they ever are. The characters are never more than their assigned roles, you’ve pretty much met all of these characters before.
I won’t ruin the ending if you’re still keen to watch this pretentious trite, but let me just warn you to be careful not to cut yourself on the edge, because it’s super edgy and 3deep5you and you probably just won’t get it.
So, in summary, Gilgamesh is a boring, inane, tiresome and pretentious excuse for anime. The sort of thing that people that would like to think that they have sophisticated and mature taste in anime like to pretend is super cool because almost no one has seen it(not saying my own taste isn’t any better than anyone else’s but you know what I mean). I cannot in good faith recommend that you waste your time watching this, because this is super uninteresting and is not what you’re looking for if you’re after an artsy psychological anime with an interesting message. It is also not a super obscure action anime with cool powers and strong characters. About as edgy as wearing a Korn t-shirt to school and as deep as a glass of water, Gilgamesh is not an anime worth your time, no matter what your interests are.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Dec 3, 2014
A defence of Elfen Lied
There is a major problem concerning Elfen Lied, especially its animated adaption. This problem is: the show is very objectively poor. Elfen Lied is everything everyone loves to hate about anime in general. For a start I’ll address what people generally tend to have a problem with and address it objectively, without letting my personal opinion affect it because honestly, if you find any of the following things I’m about to discuss off-putting in anime, you will not enjoy this show. It really sucks but Elfen Lied just sets itself up to be disliked, throughout its entire 13 episode running course
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it tries its damnedest to make itself almost impossible to appreciate, even though within it lies a brilliant social commentary and character development which is worth the watch.
First off, its nature as an ecchi-harem set up. You’ve seen this a million times already, you know exactly how it works and exactly what part each of the characters are going to play (and they do). As you should be very much aware, the set-up is very inappropriate for the genre Elfen Lied is supposed to fit. Basically, if you’re into the more action-packed gory side of anime that no doubt intrigued you about Elfen Lied in the first place, this set up is going to make you hate the show. Which leads me to another thing: the gore and the “pseudo-intellectual” thing that it has going on. For a start, the gore makes the show difficult to appreciate for a number of reasons but most importantly because of the impression it gives that Lucy, the central character, is a mindless butcher driven by blind rage (which she is, but I’ll get to that later). The gore is very over the top and this makes the show feel like it is forcing itself to be as edgy as possible for attention. All of this amounts to the psychological themes (if you can even tell there are any considering how well the terrible set up and the over the top gore masks them) running through the show coming across as cheesy and forced simply for the sake of being received in a certain way, being edgy. Then of course there is the terribly sugary “kawaii” portrayal of the characters, especially effective in making you not want to feel any empathy for the characters at all, Lucy in particular. Then of course to top it all off, the voice acting in both the Japanese and English dubs are awful, possibly some of the worst I’ve ever heard. Neither of the dubs are successful in bringing out the characters through their vocal portrayals and of course what does that mean? Yeah, you guessed it, it makes it nearly impossible to appreciate the story.
No matter how you look at it, Elfen Lied is objectively terrible, it’s everything you hate about anime. I feel fairly certain in saying that if anything in the above paragraph puts you off, you will not enjoy this show.
Which is a shame, because of what you could potentially enjoy under the surface. Elfen Lied has one important thing running for it for the most part: Lucy’s character. You could enjoy Elfen Lied if you just look at Lucy and what the show actually deep down behind its façade wants you to know. Lucy’s story is a very clever display of the effect of social discrimination, emotional betrayal, maternal neglect and bullying can have on the human mind. Around the middle section of the series, you get to discover why Lucy is the destructive monster that she is. Whether or not you accept the events that turn Lucy into a demon, because they seem relatively small considering how indiscriminately she kills, you’ve got to look at the bigger picture. Lucy is the minority lashing out; a release of contained anguish. All through her childhood, Lucy is picked on, alienated, psychologically abused you name it. And when her emotions are betrayed by people that she has let get close twice, her mind can’t take it anymore and she gives into her animal instinct (Lucy is a diclonius; diclonius pretty much exist to kill humans). The thing is, bullying is a huge problem in today’s society, always has been and always will be. But bullying and abuse is a cycle. When Lucy gives into her powerful instinct to kill, she completes that cycle unconsciously. It’s Lucy discovering that she has become a monster gradually through her relationships with other characters (the harem set up ends up being necessary for this particular reason) that you need to be watching. It’s a real shame because Lucy’s story is actually heart-breaking once you realise it, but thanks to the shows terrible execution it’s difficult to truly appreciate what the artist actually wanted you to see. This is not just limited to Lucy either, Chief Kurama contains an equally heart-breaking tale within his character as well, but I may ruin part of the story if I go into too much detail here.
You may enjoy this show, but you probably won't unfortunately because you have to dig through its excessive market value design to get at the actual heart of the show. Elfen Lied is actually beautiful, however this adaption of the story is poorly executed and it’s very difficult to enjoy. I would suggest giving its source material a spin instead rather than this, although some of the same inherent problems are still there it is slightly easier to like and the story and characters are fully developed whereas this anime adaption doesn’t even make it halfway. Basically my point is: you probably won’t enjoy this show because of its nature but under the surface, it is amazing, it’s just a shame that it tries so hard to get you to ignore the fact that there is a purpose to it all. I think that this show is brilliant, but at the same time I also hate the way it was executed and you probably will to.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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