cat in despair

Long time no see readers. I’m still alive and not yet fall into deepest pit of despair. Blame me and procrastination.

Okay, let’s see this 2 hour movie that first running in 1991. 

The basic storyline is simple and very familiar if you watch at least 2 Gundam series. It start like this, Seabook Arno, the main character, attending school festival when all of sudden Earth Federation Army and Crossbone Vanguard (yes, pirate) fighting in his colony hometown. Along with his friends he tried to escape from the colony. Cecile Fairchild one of the friends surprisingly had an interesting background. After a few gain and losing, he got his gundam and with time he was prepared to fight the final boss. Well, it’s Gundam.

Just like I said, the core story itself not new and reuse a lot in Gundam series. Male MC gain his gundam the kill ace pilots thanks to newtype ability and save the colony. Personally it’s made me kinda bored of Gundam. Furthermore it’s more of prologue than a story, you waste 2 hours for something that can be done in an hour. Good thing is it means there’s more story to be told. The sequel? It’s called Crossbone Gundam.

Story - 5
sometimes something absurd but new (hint:Trailblazer) is needed.  

Likeable though boring MC like Seabook Arno is a standard to at least made the story happened. How sad he is. The key characters’ story developing fair, Seabook got his dose of family background and conflict. Cecile too. But, once it done the development stop then left it to mobile suit fight and a bit of romance. If something need to be praised the development of side character is. Many characters appears and most of them were not neglected at all. We can see mini stories that connecting many characters and made Gundam F91 richer in story. Sadly, they also can be interpreted as unneeded scenes.

Character - 7
hey, sunrise I want female Gundam MC.. in anime!

Graphic wise.. well it’s from 1991, give it a rest. For a movie, the quality is comparable to TV series. It’s understandable though cause Gundam F91 originally was planned as a series. But hey, the best thing in Gundam series is the mobile suit designs. The gundam, the goons, and the boss. They are really worth for your eyes mecha lovers. 

Graphic and design - 7
you know, F91 height is no more than Turn A’s leg

I love the sounds. They fit very well to what really happened. Beam to beam shield, explosion, verniers, ufos, etc. It’s far more satisfying than Z gundam’s sfx (Z’s sfx can made you yawn). The instrumentals are good, they made Gundam F91 different and bring the mood. Find them, they are worth to listen. Eternal Wind ~ Hohoemi wa Hikaru Kaze no Naka, the theme song, made the great job. It has characteristic. Play the track and you know it’s from Gundam F91. Even though it’s far from being Macross, they do great job in this department. Applause please

Sound and Music - 8
deserved it

Let’s see.. boring story, many character and many unneeded scenes, mediocre graphics, but pumped by the sounds and musics. Well, it’s originally planned as a series but changed midway, reduced quality are unavoidable. 

Overall - 6.75 (or 7)
well, they do well to not ruined this too much. It has much potential though.. 

~cat in despair, and yet I got another despair…

BRS has a lot of sequel possibility. They still haven’t told us Strength’s and Yuu’s role. Many fans are disappointed, but they got money from franchises. I don’t think they would left BRS story unfinished :)

“Wow, that girl need some nutritional injections !”
How many of you think like that when you see B.R.S ? hehehe..

Black Rock Shooter or BRS in short, originally is a name of Vocaloid song sung by Miku. The song gets a lot of attentions from its uniqueness in PV. Art, music, lyric, that’s unusual than most entries and especially the character, Black Rock Shooter. Miku’s fans even count her as a new separate entities from Miku. 

So, this year in the last week of July, Black Rock Shooter released as an OVA. The character based on original BRS song including new characters. Since BRS is a long awaited title (do you remember when they released first screenshot and teaser ?) of course everyone expect a lot from this anime.

Then, what I though from this anime ? It’s an epic failure. No, I won’t say “sucks” here =D.

Start with the story, I won’t spoil you so.. I copy paste this :

These young girls hearts are pure, and then violent!

Mato Kuroi just got into junior high school, and on the first day, someone catches her eye; her classmate Yomi Takanashi. The two meet.

The innocent and naive Mato. The mature Yomi. Seemingly opposites, but the time they spend together only strengthens a growing friendship.

But as they go into their second year at the school, they get placed in separate classes, and they begin to grow apart.

But somewhere simultaneously…

In another world, a young girl, blue fire residing in her eyes, Black Rock Shooter faces another young girl; this one holding a jet-black scythe, Dead Master, and a battle to the death begins to unfold.

(Source: The Official Black Rock Shooter Site)

so that’s it. Half piece of life, half fantasy action and centered in “friendship”. With all reaction I read on forums, sites, and reviews. I think they just made a mistake. A huge mistake it is. Everyone waiting for a “huge impact” But, we never get that impact. 

Story : 6/10 ,typical for prologue story especially fantasy for shoujo.

Artwork, hmm.. Unbalanced ?
Just like I said, Half piece of life and and half action. The piece of life part is kinda.. generic. We can find this quality in K-ON, Kannagi, railgun, etc. But, they made action part epic. Or should I say they’re more concentrate in artwork and animation for this part. We can find huke’s style (If you don’t know who huke is, he is the original artist for BRS PV) in this action part. So, for this unbalance artwork.. 

Artwork and Animation : 7/10 ,oh well.

Next the music part. 
This anime is called Black Rock Shooter. BUT, the BRS song itself can only be found as instrumental in this anime. Another huge mistake… Everyone waiting for this song yet, they can’t find what they want. What the studio afraid for ? I think they want to put BRS song in the last episode of BRS as an impact, lol. Evangelion use same song for their show and they love it. BRAVEHEART and others ? BRAVEHEART is kinda similar to BRS in some way but others the not special at all. I already forgot the tracklist.

Music : 6/10 ,where’s my BRS ?

Characters, characters
They give BRS a new persona (not that Persona :3), rival, and new world for that characters. Well, the design for that characters is not bad. Normal mc, BRS herself, Yami, Death Master. In a second though, they’re great. Proof ? Did you see the PVCs ? and how good they sold ? The characters do no sin, the story is. They can do more in a better story. Then..

Characters : 8/10, mostly because the design.

Last and the most important ! OVERALL.

The story is just a prologue (we wait to long for a prologue =<), no BRS signature song (damn it), unbalanced animation (K-On + OVA quality), unbalance artworks (K-On + huke, lol), great character designs, the story killed the characters.

OVERALL : 6.5 ,you can do more, BRS-chan…

Just like BRS-chan herself, this anime need more nutritions. Fortunately, this show has sequel(s?). So, they can fix their mistake there. I’ll waiting for episode 2 :D.

~cat in despair, and yet I got another despair…

When I started “My Hunt for Old Animes” articles, I never though about I would write for an 80’s anime. Since, I’m only know 90’s animes and later. 

Gunbuster is pretty old. It was released on 1988 as 6 episodes OVA and yes, it was quality show. Hideaki Anno (NGE) also made his debut as director for Gainax in this show, he did a great job. It’s hard to say, is this anime good or bad. Each episodes somehow have different ‘feel’, maybe it’s related to how the characters developed.

Since it’s going like that. I’ll write a simple summary for each episode. 

-Episode 1 : It’s an introductory episode. What I get from this ep are macross:dyrl + patlabor blend with old shoujo anime. The result ? An interesting all girl mecha piloting school that train pilots body (gymnatics, athletics, cheerleading other normal things..) and robots body (gymnatics, athletics, cheerleading WTF ???). Insane isn’t it ? While they train the robot, the pilot inside it only moving some throttle and press some buttons. Even without some cliche scenes, it was the lamest part of this show.

-Episode 2 : Still an introductory episode. They send to outer space, met a rival, and all important cast are introduced. Ether space (some kind of warp space) was introduced here. It told us cruelty of space time, which is will be important later.

-Episode 3 : A (bit) dramatic episode. They gave MC a boyfriend and took him away in 10 minutes span. Gave MC a reason for piloting Gunbuster. Let’s move on

-Episode 4 : After teasing us for 3 episode. They finally let us see Gunbuster in action. Hell yeah, it’s a strong mecha.

-Episode 5 : Cruelty of time. If you know what “time dilation” is, then you know what I mean. If not, to put it simply, think the time in space is moving slower than in earth. After those misery, they send out gunbuster to save earth.

-Episode 6 : Best part of this show. They showed this episode in black and white colour (dunno for artistic style or economic reason, Gainax have economic problem when they produced Gunbuster, by the way) except the important scene. In this episode, humanity trying to create a blackhole (yup, they can create it in 2033) in the center of galaxy to defeat the alien. Because it’s not working well they must sacrifice Gunbuster. Time dilation in action, when Gunbuster back to the earth 12.000 years have passed. 

Overall it’s a simple super robot anime with shoujo spice. Patlabor is good example for similar anime (though patlabor take real robot route). As an anime for 80’s it’s not bad and still enjoyable. It’s a good move to showed it as 6 episodes ova, since the basic story is not that interesting.

Gunbuster will never forgotten, it’s uniqueness; the MCs, time dilation, mecha artwork, short omake in the end are its strong points. If you’re a huge super robot fans it’s a must watch  

~cat in despair

Though I said I’m not interested to HOTD in previous post, I watched it anyway.

How do I put this ? Highschool of The Dead (HOTD) is my first zombie theme anime that I ever watched. Well, the title explain how the story will be, but something still bugging me. 

I just watched 2 episodes and I think all main casts (they appeared in op song) already showing up. I dont remember their names, so watched it yourself or wiki it. The story kinda predictable since there’s lot of games that take this kind of story, Resident Evil is a good example. Those games have a simple starter formula : In a normal day a disease break out or phenomenon happen and change everyone into your lovely living corpse. Most people are turned into zombie and keep multiplying themself by biting living human, while some unlucky people fight those undead and keep survive. The rest of the story and ending is depend on the developer team or studio. 

I prefer to call this anime Left4Dead: the Anime. They have some similarities, for example: they left out on the rooftop, team party - funny thing they have some kind of role like in rpg, weapons, I don’t know the rest since I don’t really play that game. I believe lot of people feel the same (just check some forum :p). I hope they will bring chainsaw here.

Since it’s an anime of course it has some ecchi material, but still in acceptable dose. This anime contain lots.. lots of blood. If you don’t like guro scene, then stay away (sad thing they don’t show human insides). I have a feeling we will see yandere girl in short time.

Well, HOTD captivate me. So I got one more title in “watching” list.

~cat in despair