- Last OnlineAug 9, 2011 8:49 AM
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- BirthdayMar 21, 1991
- LocationDallas, Texas
- JoinedAug 3, 2009
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Nov 18, 2009
After watching the series, I went straight for the follow up movie 'Resurrection'. While I did somewhat enjoy it, I felt that it was a disappointment compared to the series.
The story was pretty weak with this one. And I knew this not even 20 minutes into the film, simply be hearing the antagonists 'plans'. By taking Afro's fathers remains and bringing him back to life... to torture him to death again to make Afro suffer... yeah, it's ridiculous. And really, this just simply felt like a poorly recycled version of the original shows storyline.
Granted, there are a few bright moments but not enough to make
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the plot really worth anything.
The art and animation once again looks beautiful, even better then the original shows. This my friends, is as good as if gets in terms of hand drawn animation. In fact, it earned itself an nomination for an Emmy! And I say it's well deserved. The look and style are easily the films main highlight.
The voice acting once again was pretty good, so I have zero complaints about that. The soundtrack is pretty damn good aswell, with a wide range of slow jazz like pieces that fit the anime perfectly.
Now on to the characters. Afro is a pretty unlikeable character in this, not giving a crap on who he kills, as long as he moves on ahead. He is incredibly cold and even seems like he should be the villain of the series rather then our hero at some points. Ninja Ninja is even more annoying then he was in the series and he's annoying to the point that I had a hard time enjoying the film at times.
The villains are pretty good... all save Sio, whom I couldn't stand. But aside from her, I thought the rest were pretty neat and far more interesting then Afro.
Overall, I thought the film was decent. Nothing special or anything I plan to rewatch again, but still it was decent. If you watched the series and enjoyed it, then by all means, watch the film, but don't go in with huge expectations.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Nov 17, 2009
For the longest time, I've been meaning to watch this after seeing AD's for it on Spike TV. Well, lucky for me I recently found it and watched all 5 episodes in one sitting and I must say... I was very impressed with it.
The story is rather simple. Afro Samurai is out for revenge for his fathers death, and he'll f*** anyone who stands in his way.
With each episode we learn just a little bit more about Afro and his haunted and blood filled history, and this all builds up to the final showdown. The plot overall, is rather simple and straight forward, but
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in the latter episodes things do become more heart and story driven. Not exactly the deepest story you'll find, but it still delivers the goods.
The art and animation is fantastic, that simple. Each movement is carefully animated creating a very smooth and often times beautiful animation. The action scenes are incredible to watch and should make any action junkie very happy. I'd even say the action scenes here rival Hellsing Ultimate. And that's saying something. So yeah, the animes budget is clearly seen here.
The voice acting was great, one of the best I've seen in an anime, with Samuel L. Jackson and Ron Perlman being the highlights. The soundtrack was also very good and fitting to the series, and even though I'm not much of a fan of rap, the slow rap intro was great to listen too.
The characters themselves were pretty interesting. While I thought the main protagonist Afro, was a walking badass, he was very cold... maybe even to cold. It was a tad hard to feel any sympathy for him, especially during a certain fight in episodes 4 and 5 (in which I had a tough time figuring out who I was routing for). Ninja Ninja, Afro's sidekick was pretty damn annoying, though it was interesting seeing the true role he played later on.
The antagonists weren't really that interesting in my opinion, save for 2 (one's a twist and the other being Justice the main antagonist) the others were just meh. The main bad group of characters 'Empty Seven Clan' are made up of identical monks and a big dude... yep, nothing very interesting there.
Overall, I say this is one hell of an anime and something which I wish had lasted a bit longer. An entertaining story, beautiful animations, superb voice acting, a badass protagonist, you really can't go wrong here.
So yes, this get's my stamp of awesomeness :D
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 9, 2009
Hellsing is my favorite manga of all time. It combines a fun story, memorable characters, quirky humor, stylish art, and unrelenting gore and brutality all into one little paper back graphic novel.
So naturally, you'd think that the manga would make an awesome anime. Well, Chiaki J. Konaka and Umanosuke Iida thought so too and took it upon themselves to make an anime based off the popular series. In many ways, they succeeded. But they also failed...
The anime was released in 2001, long before the manga series would be complete. So they were forced to come up with their own story, completely unrelated to the
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manga (save for a few key plot points). This potentially is a pretty cool idea and allows room for originality, but the story in the anime is very hit and miss. There were times I was really enjoying the series and other times that I was flat out bored. I felt that the story just dragged and was often times pointless.
The story also lacks a key element that makes Hellsing so great, and that's the humor. This anime takes itself very seriously, but it loses heart doing so.
I've heard many times from fellow fans that the anime is just poor a fanfiction, and I can't say I disagree.
The animation is just plain ugly, even by TV anime standards. The characters are all poorly drawn, the colors are bland and ugly, and animation is smooth but suffers from choppiness. Visually, this is a lifeless anime. And that's all I can really say about it.
The soundtrack and voice acting is the anime's highlight. The soundtrack is nothing short of wonderful. The jazz tracks really set you in the mood for the series and I'd go as far as saying that the actual album is worth they buy. The voice acting was also very good. Crispin Freeman, K. T. Gray, Victoria Harwood, Steven Brand, Ralph Lister, and the rest of the cast did such an excellent job voicing their characters.
All the characters themselves were great, but the one character that truly stands out in the series is Seras. Her character is really fleshed out and you got to know her alot more then you did in the manga. Alucard was great, but he really becomes more of a prop in the background then anything else. The shows villain 'Incognito' was just... blah. He was kinda cool, but can't hold a candle to the manga's villain 'The Major'.
Overall, this is just simply an okay anime. Nothing rememberable or even exciting. It's not bad really, but it isn't great either. And to be perfectly blunt, this fails to live up to Kouta Hirano's vision. In recent years, they've rebooted the series with 'Hellsing Ultimate', an OVA series that is almost panel by panel like the manga's. I highly recommend you go see the OVA's, those did everything that the TV series couldn't.
If you consider yourself a Hellsing fan, then by all means go see this series. But if you're just entering the Hellsing universe, then I recommend you stay clear of this and go straight onto 'Hellsing Ultimate'.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 7, 2009
I was chatting with a online friend, and somehow anime was brought up. He then mentioned 'Paranoia Agent', and raved about what a masterpiece this anime was. I had never heard of it and read up on it. At first, I wasn't expecting to much, just a standard anime series... and boy I was wrong. I can not tell you how wonderful and absolutely addicting this show was.
It was superb across the board. From characters, animation, story, sound... everything was excellent. But be warned... this anime becomes very surreal and bizarre... far from what I was expecting.
The story starts off fairly simple. Some kid in
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roller blades is going around attacking people with a bat, and it's up to two detectives to catch him. Eventually, we begin to see a pattern in these attacks, and that not all is what it seems. Each episode delves deeper and deeper into insanity and pure chaos as the key characters stories begin to unravel.
The plot had me hooked from the beginning, wanting to watch the next episode to find out more to the mystery of Lil' Slugger. It's fine story telling at it's best, chop full of symbolism and meaning. It's an absolute psychological mind fuck, and you end up questioning everything you see. It's fantastic. Granted, the plot may become quite convoluted for some, so if you want just a mindless fun anime, look elsewhere.
The art and animation is also top notch. The characters look fantastic, along with the fluid animation. There were only a few times that I noticed anything hinting at choppy. The art also does very well in capturing the dark and gritty nature of the story. It's also one of the few animes that I've seen with rather 'realistic' art. There's no huge eyes, not much over exaggerated facial expressions, most of the animation in grounded (granted, a few of the characters are drawn kinda silly). And this is also one of the few animes that the Japanese... actually look Japanese.
The soundtrack and voice acting was great. The beginning theme (yume no shima shinen kouen) is pretty damn catchy and gets you in the right mood for each episode. The soundtrack through out is also great, keeping the dark and psychological nature of the show.
I watched the English dub version, and all the VA's did an excellent and believable job. Nice to see some good English Anime dubs, but I'd like to eventually watch it in Japanese.
And the characters... boy, where do I start. If you hadn't guessed by the shows intro, this is a very character driven anime. The show had me truly loving some characters and loathing others (for the good reasons). The story centers around two detectives. Keiichi Ikari, rough a middle aged cop who feels out of touch with the current generation and his partner Mitsuhiro Maniwa, a young optimistic cop with a promising future. As the story goes on, we meet all sorts of characters, and all with some deep and very human issues.
There are many twists and revelations about these characters and some truly caught me off guard (I won't spoil anything, but don't expect any character to stay as we knew them after all is said and done). And that's what I think this series does best, capturing true humanity within these great characters.
Overall, this is one hell of an anime. It keeps you guessing and wanting more with each passing episode. And I was extremely sad once it was all over. This anime does almost it all right. The only thing that I was a tad disappointed with was the ending. I felt that it could've used more and tied up a few open story lines, but it was still satisfying nevertheless.
If you're into movies like The Silence of the Lambs, Jacobs Latter, The Sixth Sense, etc. You'll love this series.
I highly recommend seeing this one.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Aug 5, 2009
Yet another anime I remember watching during my Toonami days. I remember not liking it very much when I was younger, due to the dark plot. But I've recently rewatched it again (years later) and I must say, this was a kickass anime.
I was rewarded with a great plot, jazzy music, excellent animation, and a good moral lesson.
The story itself had a pretty interesting and original twist on the End of the World genre of movies. With the theme's of man vs nature and such (it does this much better then The Happening, but that isn't very hard to do).
I only wish that they'd
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have made a few more episodes. I'd really have liked to have seen the plot deepen somewhat, which we didn't get the chance to see with just 4 episodes.
The animation was great, at least the hand drawn portion. It flows very nicely and the colors are vibrant. The drawn stuff has aged very well... the CGI not so much. They added quite a bit of CGI, which probably looked cool 10 years ago. But now you can CLEARLY see the age. This can be an eye sore at times.
The soundtrack was quite interesting. You'd think that something like this would have an epic orchestra score. But instead, the soundtrack consists of a group of jazz tracks. The jazz actually fits very well with the anime, who would've thought...
The characters aren't very complex save for Zorndyke, who ends up being a very complex and deep character. Other than him, the other characters remain 2 dimensional. Hayami is your standard antihero, Kino is your standard annoying female counter part, and Verg (who is actually my favorite) is your standard bad guy, up until the end where we see a completely different side to the monster shark captain.
Once again, I blame the lack of episodes for this. We're just not given time to watch these characters develop at all.
Overall, this is a pretty good anime from beginning to end. It has and uses some very interesting idea's, some elements work (the concept and story) while others don't (the CGI).
I recommend this to any action/apocalypses junkies.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Aug 4, 2009
I remember awhile back, I use to come home from school and watch this on Toonami. This and DBZ were the highlights of the few hours I spent watching TV before getting to homework.
I just recently found Outlaw again and decided to rewatch the series again, since it had been years since I watched it last.
It was not as good as I had remembered... it was 10x better! I enjoyed it from beginning to end, and I wasn't bored... once. And if your able to keep my attention for 26 episodes straight, then your doing something right.
I'll start with the story. It was very
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enjoyable, and something that pretty much anyone could jump into, anime fan or not. It has a straight forward story but still manages to be deep and meaningful. If I were trying to get someone into anime, this would be the anime I would hand them.
The art was also very good. The animation (particularly the action scenes) flow very nicely and isn't choppy or glitchy at any point. There were a few times that I noticed that Gene was missing some details, but this is easily forgivable and not very noticeable.
The sound was good. The soundtrack wasn't anything memorable, but wasn't bad by any means. Not much to say other than that.
The characters were extremely fun and diverse, which I like in a cast. You got the main protagonist; Gene Starwind, an outlaw and womanizer. You then have Jim Hawking (kid sidekick), Melfina (a bio-android with an unkown propose), Aisha Clanclan (catgirl and comic relief), Suzuka (badass assassin chick), and the best fictional computer ever, Gilliam II. You can't help but fall in love with all these characters as the show goes on.
The villains were all pretty cool, but I wish we could've seen some more development with them. Like Lord Hazanko and his unit The Anten Seven. You really don't see much of them until the last few episodes. The MacDougall brothers were pretty cool (Ron especially since we share somewhat of a resemblance >_>)
Overall, this is one of the best anime's I've ever seen. There's ton's of fun to be had here, and the rewatch value is very high with this one (which is a major plus on my end). If you enjoy Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Blade Runner, and just Sci Fi in general- no, if you just enjoy fun movies in general, I HIGHLY recommend this series. You won't regret it....
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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