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A pretty flaccid reimagining of an obscure manga, Barom One has some of the lowest production values I've ever seen in an anime on top of some pretty barebones character writing.

Set in the distant year of 2014, The show follows two high school boys. One is sharp and level-headed and the other is a little dim-witted but well meaning, and one day they gain the ability to fuse and become the superhero Barom One. Fighting a variety of monsters and possessed humans alike, they aim to protect their loved ones and the world from total catastrophe.

Sounds cool, yeah? Well in execution it's ... pretty lackluster and it sadly falls short of being a so-bad-it's-good anime you can enjoy ironically. The animation starts out bad and it only gets worse as the series progresses. On top of that, the art direction has that crusty early-2000's look to it, meaning low saturation and a homogenized approach to character design, which is especially disappointing considering the original manga was illustrated by the author of Golgo 13, Takao Saito, and had a memorable look to it in comparison. The redesign of the titular Barom One is similarly pretty whatever, it looks alright but you can tell it's derivative of something like Go Nagai's Devilman, which wasn't something I would say about the original look. The attempt to update the setting is similarly half-hearted, the only difference between 2014 and 2003 is that cell phones have holograms, it's really lame.

The two boys, while distinct at first, slowly lose their defining characteristics and become generic action heroes and are totally uninteresting to watch. The side characters aren't much better, the three heroines the show seems weirdly keen on advertising barely do much and the love interest is hardly even a character.

Pointing out all the production mistakes and baffling background details is the highlight of the show, there's one episode early on where the animators left in a black frame that lasts for three seconds, the entrance to a zoo has a logo written in lower-case comic sans with ugly rainbow coloration, the fights at the end of every episode showcase some of the worst animation in the show, there are seven eyecatches per episode and some happen less than two minutes apart from one another, etc, but these funny moments don't justify watching all 13 episodes.


My verdict is to wait until someone compiles all the funny bits on Youtube, don't subject yourself to this.

Death Note is frustrating.

About fifteen to eighteen episodes in, I was about ready to believe that the show deserved its ranking at #1 as this site's "Most Popular Anime", and I was more than willing to list it on my favorite anime list...but then something happened. That spark Death Note had, that hook, that energy it drew me in with started to decay, and by episode 37 I was left an emotional wreck, trying to place the exact moment where the show lost me and how it did.

First off, it's important to address the consistently great aspects. From an audio and visual perspective, ... the show has aged tremendously well. For an anime made about twelve years ago, the visuals are still powerful and have the energy and weight of a well-directed Hollywood movie, and the haunting, powerful musical score highlights and helps sell the show's most intense scenes. The same ten or so tracks are played all the time, but they're so well made that I can overlook the repetition.

Now onto the meat of the show. From the start, the show establishes a strong theme of Good vs. Evil, Justice vs. Justice, and the psychological warfare between Light and L, the posterboys of the anime, lead to some of the most intense and well-executed action scenes in anime history; even though a single punch is never thrown (initially, at least). That clash of ideals was easily the most compelling aspect of the show, which is why it's such a damn shame that it became increasingly muddied and hard to interpret as the series limped on.

That conflict between the two characters was pushed further and further into the background as more ridiculous and generic plotlines, be it a battle with a boring evil organization or a less-interesting L clone, took over the foreground. For spoiler reasons I won't go into detail with the latter, but Near is nowhere near (ha) as interesting a replacement, even though he fulfills the same thematic purpose.

The first dozen or so episodes had a simple, yet effective series of events that could have led into a satisfying 24ish episode series, with a memorable cast of characters and a story that's easy to follow. Instead, we got an anime that started out brilliantly and ended up nosediving into wasted concepts, random character introductions for the sake of contrived plot twists, plot holes large enough to drive a bus through, and a story so needlessly convoluted that it almost turns into a parody of itself towards the end.

It's heartbreaking. I wanted to love Death Note, I really did, and if the first and second arc were listed as separate entries on MAL I would make sure the gap in the score between them is large, but I can't in good conscience rate the final product a high score just because that initial batch of episodes was so strong.

6/10

PS: Don't care what anyone says, I love the second OP. It's a headbanger and accurately reflects how much of a clusterf*ck the show becomes.

Calamity of a Zombie Girl is one of those enjoyably bad anime that only come once in a blue moon. It harkens back to an era of grindhouse B-movies, with its bizarre plot, bad characters, exploitationist themes like lesbian undertones, copious amounts of gore and random kung-fu, and in spite of all that it manages to be entertaining as hell.

A group of dumb teenagers steal a "life stone" from two (lesbian?) kung fu zombies, and all hell breaks loose as they try to get it back from them. Unfortunately, the anime suffers from that typical B-movie problem of having really boring characters ... standing around in a room either dumping exposition or yelling at each other, but the highlights are high enough to make the obnoxious stuff you have to sit through worth it. Occasionally, the ONA tries to get you to care about its main character (the main zombie girl), but it comes off as so hackneyed and lazy that it feels like they just threw her backstory in to make her seem less shallow. The other characters don't fair too well either, with one-note, stereotypical horror movie archetypes like "The nerd" and "The cheating girl", etc.

The animation ranges from poor to adequate. The action scenes are framed and animated in a satisfying way, while the more low-key scenes are minimalistic and shot in such a way that highlights how boring they are. My biggest gripe with the look of the show is the cookie-cutter, bland art style, which is unfortunate because it slightly detracts from the over-the-top scenes of violence that are peppered throughout the ONA's 70 minute runtime.

There are scenes of violence in this that are so sudden, so over-the-top, and so bizarre that I couldn't help but laugh uncontrollably whenever they happened, especially towards the end, however, I'm aware it's not for everyone. Heads are smashed, guts are shown, impalement and decapitation is present, and it's overall something I would not recommend to the squeamish. I think this was supposed to be a horror anime, and if that's the case they did a terrible job at making it scary, because all attempts at shock and terror came off as hilarious.

This is, by far, one of the most unintentionally entertaining anime I've seen in a while. There's a lot of dumb filler you have to sit through, but the highlights are so high that it's still worth one watch. Highly recommended for a bad movie night.

Go Nagai's 1973 shonen battle manga "Cutie Honey" is something of an odd relic. It comes from a time when the ecchi sub-genre was in its infancy, and mangaka were coming up with weird and bizarre spins on the "let's find a way to incorporate full-frontal nudity in our stories" approach. Enter Cutie Honey, a story about an android girl who attends an all-girls catholic school (full of very open-lesbians), while battling the evil forces of Panther Zora (the head of an evil organization hell-bent on world domination) with her ability to change into a wide variety of skill-based costumes.

With a ... weird premise like that, you'd expect Nagai to go off-the-rails in his execution of the concept. He most certainly does, but he somehow found a way to make the reading experience as tonally uneven, badly paced, and as pointless as possible.

Story: 4/10
The story is cliche and what you would expect from a battle manga, but considering this was one of the first of its kind I can give it a pass. However, what's inexcusable is the constant introduction of new abilities Honey can utilize, which kills most of the tension during the fight scenes when you realize she can pull another power out of nowhere and completely turn the battle in her favor. Another aspect the story fails in is its inconsistent tone, which shifts between dark and comical with the same level of grace as a busted-up car trying to start up again. Not to spoil anything, but the shift in tone between the two final chapters was so bad that I physically cringed, and the finale was so anticlimactic that I seriously wondered if there were several plot-crucial pages that were missing.

Art: 6/10
It's what you'd expect in an ecchi manga. Even if you're not into the full-frontal nudity, the art style has a cuteness to it that can only really come from Go Nagai, with his simplistic and appealing character designs. The manga is decently drawn for the most part, but sometimes the anatomy is horribly off, with faces and body not being drawn consistently (and not in a good way). Overall, the art is fine, but not really remarkable.

Characters: 3/10
Hoo boy.
You don't really go into an ecchi manga expecting complex characterization or development, but I wasn't expecting the characters to be THIS one-note. The titular Cutie Honey is driven by the typical "I want to avenge my dad" character archetype, which ends up making her about as interesting as a plank of wood with two balloons attached to the front of it. The side characters aren't much better, especially in the case of her best friend (whom we see her spending very little time with), who simply exists to serve as a damsel in distress or a motivation device, with very little characterization outside of those two purposes. The only positive I can find is that I might've gotten a light chuckle out of some of the side characters and their interactions with Honey, but I say light chuckle with at least ten invisible air quotes.

Enjoyment: 4/10
This is a manga aimed at horny twelve-year-olds and it doesn't pretend to be anything else. Cutie Honey is peppered with """attempts""" at comedy and scenes meant to trigger some kind of sexual response, most of which I found to be mildly amusing at best and unbearably tedious at worst. I did find myself enjoying the numerous battle scenes, even when considering the lack of tension in them, and the various outfits Honey wears are visually interesting and add some variety to the setpieces. But still, there's no denying that balance of enjoyment weighs in favor of "bad".

Overall: 4/10
I didn't have a lot of expectations going in to Cutie Honey, but I wasn't expecting it to be this lackluster. From the wildly inconsistent shift between comedy and drama to the crude sex appeal, the manga was quite the chore to get through. There's fun to be had, sure, with the cute art-style and amusing fight scenes, but these two strengths aren't strong enough for me to whole-heartedly recommend the entire package. Go Nagai had a fun idea that could've been executed in a fun way, but he fumbled and ended up creating something uneven and irritating. Not an awful read, but not something I'd ever go back to or recommend to anyone.

That said, there are a couple good things to come out of this property. The 90's OVA series "Shin Cutie Honey" is a really enjoyable watch, and from what I've heard the 2000's OVA is even better. If you're going to experience Cutie Honey, those two shows are probably your safest bet.