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Mar 30, 2022
Contrasting with 2020's anime, which commonly features average, unhappy protagonists that suddenly are teleported/have their lives changed so that their frustrations are magically solved, anime from the 70's often features protagonists that come from unfavourable origins or poverty and that have to overcome critical adversities by themselves. They usually show an inspiring strength to endure the often exceedingly unfair situations they are put into, and sincere courage to face hardships. You see similar situations in anime like Ashita no Joe, Attack No.1 or Candy Candy.
Sasurai no Taiyou follows this trend as well, featuring the tale of a girl who, being switched from her rich birth
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family as a baby, ends up living in a very poor house, and the story develops between her dream to become a songstress and the many hardships she faces in her life, which more often than not comes from her plain lack of money. Her "rival", and antagonist, Miki, who is the other switched baby, often uses her family's wealth and influence to bribe her way into success, while Nozomi has to face every sort of realistic difficulty.
This is an anime that develops a grounded story, with most events being authentic and engaging. While the focus is on Nozomi's late-teen professional, familial and, in a smaller measure, romantic life, there's also, in parallel, the underlying plot of the switched babies at birth. You know it was the scheme of a character that sometimes appears and influences the episodes - but this story mostly stays unsolved and it keeps you in anticipation of its eventual resolution throughout the anime. And, of course, it has a musical subplot, with Nozomi being a songstress-to-be.
If you liked any of the other 70's anime I mentioned before, it's very likely you'll enjoy this one as well. You'll see many similarities in its tone here and there. This is the type of story and main character you'll only find in old anime like this.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 19, 2021
"The kids in Digimon cry" - this is the title of a YouTube video from Canal do Sahgo (a YouTube channel with insights about anime that I personally love) and that expresses well in a short sentence part of the reason why Digimon Adventure stands out from other kids anime of the time, and why this will be a positive review.
While on its core Digimon Adventure can be seen as another of the many kid's shows with cool marketable monsters of the late 90s-00s, it has many unique ambitious qualities that make it stand apart from similar shows. This is noticed in its very conception.
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The Digimon Adventure anime starts not with the TV anime, but with a short movie aired a day before directed by nothing less than Mamoru Hosoda (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Wolf Children), being the work that would leverage his career to later being one the most famous anime film directors of the industry. The short movie, memorable for the extensive use of Ravel's Bolero, already sets a distinctive tone for this series, adding a certain introspection and emotional weight to a type of series that usually boils down to shallow action scenes and one-dimensional kids and adults characters.
Digimon tries to be different. The kids on Digimon are insecure, they miss their families, they act very selfish and get annoyed by things that would annoy any other 10-years old, they fight among themselves and often make bad decisions... just like normal, real kids - or adults. Digimon sets itself apart by having nothing less than 7 main characters, plus 1 other added through it, breaking by far the "standard trio" formula that many of its rival shows have. These characters have unique personalities, which are surprisingly pretty grounded, developed over the show and serve as the basis for many interesting episodes. For a children's show, the fact that the kids have some self-awareness and aren't one-dimensional "Ash Ketchum"-like characters is really refreshing and helps Digimon Adventure create a unique identity.
Being a show of the 2000's transitional era of anime to digital animation (which produced some of the worst animated shows of all time), Digimon Adventure's animation a lot of the time is lacking and regularly uses some statically animated scenes. But, it still manages to create an artistic identity of its own in the middle of the mess. The backgrounds are ok and, when on the Digital World, feature some characteristic white "dots" that create an acceptable simple identity. However, of course, the most memorable identity of the show comes from the soundtrack, with many unusually melancholic tracks, as well as the use of Matt's harmonica and "Boléro de Ravel" for added melancholic vibes, and, of course, the epic and exciting transformation theme "Brave Heart", which is probably one of the most memorable themes of anime of all time.
While I praised most of the things that positively sets Digimon Adventure apart from other shows, it still, unfortunately, can be considered weak on its quality as a whole. Apart from the eventual effortless animation, some episodes are straight-up badly directed. There's episodes that clearly had great potential, yet things happen in a really convoluted way that wastes all that potential. There's also some power creeps here and there (notably when the last act begins - which, in my opinion, was unnecessary, but they had to fill the 50-episode quota anyway) and villains are evil because of: yes. However, some of these things are just plain common on average kids or shounen shows as a whole, so it's not unexpected or especially bad.
But even so, in conclusion, I believe Digimon Adventure stands out for having many positive, unique characteristics, and they should be remembered.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Mar 20, 2021
When you manage to watch a full 13 episode anime on a single day - and never feel the urge to increase the playback speed - then something was done right.
Firstly, of course Elfen Lied stands out by having all that "naked innocent pink-haired anime girl" mixed with blood and gore. But behind these apparently ultra-appelative factors, there's a surprisingly enjoyable story. In each episode you learn a bit more about the central plot, which involves a secret laboratory experimenting with certain girls born with "horns" and deadly psychic powers. This happens mostly little by little presenting characters and their stories, in the present and
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the past (there's plenty of flashbacks). It manages to keep an excellent pace and never seems to break the rules of its own universe, keeping you hooked till the last episode. Even the comedy scenes (yes, there are some) are nicely placed, and great.
Elfen Lied's plot and characters were made to amuse, being simple and one-dimensional. We shouldn't compare it to much deeper and developed stories. Yet, I believe the majority of anime aren't as amusing as Elfen Lied, even less have an original story as engaging.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jan 29, 2021
|TL;DR|
Stop!! Hibari-kun! has an interesting and unique premise, and an acceptable approach to it, for 1982. The humor is absurd and full of references to pop-culture like other gag-manga of the time, which would be nice if this aspect didn't overwhelmed the show, taking place over possibilities to develop the story or *anything* of the relationship between the MC and Hibari, which stays limited to funny skits until the last episode. Which is especially bad since this is not a short anime, having 35 episodes.
|Review|
Stop!! Hibari-kun!'s premise is quite cool (considering this is the 80's in Japan): the main character suddenly has to live
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in the house of a (comical) Yakuza boss that lives with his 4 daughters: however, one of them, Hibari, the most beautiful one, is actually a boy.
Hibari is labeled as a "crossdresser" in the series, though it may be considered transgenderism by today's standards. The main premise is that even though Hibari is a "pervert" (that's how his father calls him), he is so beautiful and awesome that people just have to accept him the way he is. He publicly acts like a girl and nobody outside the family knows he's a boy. The MC of course rapidly falls in love with him (not knowing he's a boy), and when he discovers Hibari's real gender he tries to negate it. Throughout the series he keeps trying to convince himself that he's not attracted to him, even though he definitely is, and Hibari always teases and flirts with him knowing this.
Again, considering the spirit of the time, this is an acceptable approach to the subject. This is a comedy anime after all, and nothing is taken seriously. And this may also be the biggest flaw of the anime: even with interesting characters, like Hibari's other sisters, the classmates at school, and a cast of other comical yakuza employed by the family, these characters aren't explored how they should - considering this is an average-length 35 episode anime.
Most episodes just consist of random comedy situations with a fair dose of surrealism and references to pop-culture greatly inspired by other gag-manga of the time like Dr. Slump (which was publishing and being successful at the time). I'm a great fan of this type of humor, but it starts getting repetitive and boring once the show is going on, but nothing is actually happening. Some characters receive more episodes focused on them, while others, for some inexplicable reason, are almost ignored. It's really unbalanced.
And this is especially worse considering Hibari and his relationship with the MC is basically *never* developed in *any* way. Things always fall down to shallow comedy skits of Hibari flirting with the MC and him getting flustered or embarrassed, until the very last episode. Actually, the last episode happens just like any regular episode, like the show was abruptly cut in half. It makes you feel there was a lot of wasted potential in this series, considering its uncommon type of plot.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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