Unwilling allies at first, the two become closer as their search for the sacred "Jewel of Four Souls" continues. If Kagome really is the reincarnation of the shrine-maiden Kikyo, can it be that she's becoming jealous of herself...?
Plot/story: A cat-and-mouse game with nonstop twists and plot advancement. Because the tension and stakes constantly rise, it's monotone in pace and feeling.
Dialogue: The super geniuses are pretentious and coldly super-human -- the logic and reasoning they are blessed with are ridiculous and have no believability. The secondary characters are fittingly bewildered and confused.
Characters: The leads have no motivations other than a robotic resolve to kill the other; they are distant and unlikeable. All of the other humans are of no consequence, which is a shame as the main character's family is warm and sincere. The death god is entertaining but he isn't impartial, despite what the story claims, and he's as disposable as the rest of the filler characters.
Voice acting: The main character and the death god are consistently in-character and fun to listen to. The rest could be more animated.
Music/sound: The orchestration is well-produced but oppressively dark and melodramatic: the apocalyptic theme that backs the writing in the notebook is overdone, even considering the plot.
Animation/Art: The character designs are sometimes weirdly realistic with an off-putting 3-D look. Otherwise, they are average. The monochromatic visuals are oppressive in their overuse of blackness. The varied backgrounds are plain.
Enjoyment: It's exciting to see the plot unveiled, but the endless dramatic escalation and not being attached to either of the leads was frustrating. Seeing what happens next was not nearly enough for me to keep watching.
Overall: Recommended for those who view action and suspense as paramount in a series. Those seeking emotional and moral substance should pass.
Cowboy Bebop is one of the most well known anime series in the west. The show provides interesting characters, great animation and an amazing soundtrack.
Animation 9/10: I really do not see anything wrong with the animation. Some people will say its looks dated so they think I can't give it near top marks, but the dated looks contribute to the style to make the space atmosphere more grim at times to really convey the feel of the show. The art style is one of my favorites with plenty of detail which puts modern shows to a shame. Everything looks fluid and cool.
Sound 10/10: The English dub is very good, some of the voices and lines sounding something out of a movie, not an anime. What really makes this show good is the soundtrack that accompanies the fighting and does so in a very good way, surpassing its successor Samurai Champloo by far. The intro is a masterpiece, very artistic and the music composition is awesome. Who could hate the Green Bird church sequence?
Characters 7/10: Had the show or episodes been longer, this could have gotten higher. Nearly all the episodes are self-contained, which is good (if you just want to jump in on a episode, you can), but some of the characters in the self-contained episodes could have really developed into amazing characters, which is a shame. I also hated Edward who is quite annoying.
Story 7/10: Since most of the episodes are self-contained, the stories are quite short and not very developed but in a show like this the characters make up for this by being a story themselves. The whole relationship of Spike to the Syndicate I say is the real story and it’s a shame that not enough episodes are dedicated to this plot because it could have developed into something very interesting but instead it turns into something that seems rushed.
Overall: Cowboy Bebop is a great anime that people who are mature enough to handle the themes and violence of it can really enjoy. That’s why it’s a Seinen (Young Man) after all.
Storyline/Plot: 10/10
The storyline was nicely crafted and was extremely engaging. The last part of the journey in which the Elric brothers took to find the Philosopher's Stone was most touching. The plot was also separated into a few event arcs which contributes to their knowledge of the Philosopher's stone. Humor was sometime added to lift the melancholy. The death of certain well-liked characters truly made this a brilliant sad story.
Character development: 10/10
How each character felt and thought was perfectly expressed. Main characters such as Alphonse Elric, Edward Elric and Roy Mustang were well developed. Each character was also unique and most had a certain goal to achieve. This made each character feel important, as most of them contribute to the main storyline in some way.
Animation/ Graphics: 9.5/10
The characters were nicely drawn although they were not very detailed. The environment setting was great and the dull colors used were perfect in portraying the sadness. The gore and blood was also well drawn, and the fighting scenes were great.
Music/Songs: 8.5/10
The opening themes were not bad. (Although i only liked the first opening theme) The ending themes were quite nice too. The background music used suits the anime well throughout the entire series.
Overall:9.5/10
Fullmetal Alchemist is one of the best anime in its genre. The way that the story was revealed managed to interest me throughout the 51 episodes. The ending though not very conclusive, was good enough for me. The way they used alchemy was also fun and the fighting scenes were great too. This is a very good anime for anyone who loves action and a touching story.
Story: 10/10
This was just an amazing story. In an alternate world the empire of Britannia is a world power, they then invaded and conquered Japan and named it Area 11. The Japanese were all called Elevens and were basically looked down and mistreated by the victorious Britannians. Lelouch Lamperouge, a Britannian, did not like what the empire was doing with Japan. One day he receives the power of the Geass which enabled him to give one absolute command to any one and they are forced to follow that command, he then goes on a crusade to topple the empire. Everything about the story was excellent with the right balance of pacing, comedy episodes here and there, plot twists and action. I was sucked into the story from the beginning. The only negative that I can think of is that gut punch of an episode near the end when it just seemed to convenient that Lelouch's Geass goes off at the worst possible time, it was such a pain to watch the events that followed.
Characters: 10/10
The show had the perfect cast of characters. Lelouch is the undoubted star of the show. He is like Light Yagami in such a way that he ain't your run of the mill protagonist. He is the perfectly balanced anti hero, he has a dark side but at the same time he still has qualities that save his humanity. I also liked C.C. because she was just so cute especially when she wears other outfits and when she hugs that stuff toy. Kallen is another good character, strong willed, brave and did I mention that she's hot? The only character that I didn't like was Suzaku and I know that I'm not alone here. I really HATED his guts, I hoped that he would die, that Lelouch would just leave him to die but alas I did not get my wish.
Animation/Art: 10/10
The character designs are amazing and excellent, they were designed by a some group named Clamp after all. From the pretty boys and beautiful women to the mechs everything just looked great. The battle scenes were also nice and filled with great action.
Music/Sound: 9/10
I liked the opening theme Flow, I think it suited the show. The background music was great as well, it helped make scenes dramatic and epic when they needed to be. All of the characters sounded great as well.
Overall it was just a great show to watch. The story and characters are its strongest points, you are forced to watch just to know what is going to happen next. It's so refreshing to see a show that lives up to all its hype. This is now among my favorite shows, its a must watch.
This anime is one of my favorites, good story, great artwork, cool music, and great characters. The only thing wrong with this anime is that the story might not fit easy going anime watchers, who just want to sit back and watch an easy going anime. The other problem is that some of the characters design (Togusa's mullet) are a little old at times. Still it's a worthwhile anime that should be watched.
Animation 9
Very smooth and cool, but some of the CGI/Hand drawn sections feel popped out in some areas. But other wise really good animation.
Sound 9
The sound was really well done, but I like a little more variety in the music.
Story 6
This story is not for everyone, young viewers will find confusing and lose interest in it fast. Also it's slow in a lot of places and it moves at slug speed in a lot of places. The 6 means it’s above the norm, but it will confuse and frustrate easy going viewers.
Character 8
Gets an 8 because of the characters have depth, but they seem too superhuman to relate sometime. Still that's what makes them so cool in the first place.
Art Design 9
Excellent, but there are times were I felt that there was too much gray and lack luster in some areas in a lot of places, so that’s why it got a 9.
Enjoyment 9
Obviously I liked it, minus a few minor quirks, but that's always expected of a high production anime like this. I suggest renting the anime, because you may like it and might not. So a watch it and decide for yourself. I hope you like this anime because there are a lot of good things about this anime.
Overall 8.2
A great anime that depends on the individuals taste in anime.
This anime is basically about solving mysteries: murders, robbery, tricks or anything that needs a lot of thinking. Every episode is a different story and within these is the case of the high school detective Kudo Shinichi who is a son of a famous writer Kudo Yusako. The begning of the story we can see that only a few people know his secret, as the process going on we see that the FBI is meddling now and it makes things better, I think the late cases are much more better than the 1st ones.. maybe the ones before 200.
The Characters are cute, nice, kinda develop but too slowly, I like Shinichi and Ran the most, they are in love, miss each other and the rest of the characters are also nice, in fact the cool thing is that each character *even the minors* have a stories of themselves. For example, Officier Takagi who is despertly in love the another minor character, Officer Sato, but this love is being interuppted by another one: Shiratori. another is example is the FBI agent Judy Santimillion story with her family, or Shuihichi's story or even Inspector Meguri's story with his wife......etc, so you can understand all the characters (well, most of them). Yeah, sometimes there are a few illogical things, but that is too rare. The anime with these characters is really great!! It's as if these characters are just born for this anime, I tried once to imagine other characters in this anime but it was useless. None was good enough for it.
The Animationlet me think... do you want 3d stuff like Digimon or the Mecha anime? Then forget this one. you want cute fun weird things with funny faces like Get Backers? Forget this one then. You want serious drawing with right details like Monster? Forget this one then. In fact this anime has a little from each one. For example, you can see the 3d things in the backgrounds, they are really amazing, and this only happens in the late episodes. Don't expect to see people or meccha stuff as a 3d. If you are expecting funny stuff you can find a little here too, for example when Kogoro gets mad at Conan or in the funny scenes the shape and size of eyes could change. Don't except a huge flexibility, the drawing is funny within a series limit. If you are expecting to see a serious faces you can see this in the sad scenes or in the invetigations scenes, not as serious as Monster or Death Note but still really good and expresses right. As for the backgrounds in the beginning of the series it was average, with detials but not too much and colours are kinda feel right, however the last season's drawing is much much better, with improved techniques.
The Music is average too, this anime has a lot of openings and endings, some are like pop-rock and some are calm slow. You can even find a mixtures of these. However, the background music is really awesome and enjoyable, well, not all of it to be honest. Let's jusy say that the music is not best thing in this anime.
Finally, if you have time (a lot of time), like solving mysteries (not childish ones) and enjoy slight romance with comedy with a lot of action, then you will for sure enjoy this anime. I know its long, with more than 10 movies and a number of OVAs, but believe me its worth it, I was going to put 9 or 8 points for it but I changed my mind while writing this review. I feel that this anime really deserve to be given a chance to watch.
Ok now don't get me wrong, I'm giving this review to the anime but not the manga.
Story - 1. Pretty much followed the manga throughout and even made the bonus episodes. I'd say through and through, the story was very good BUT!!! the anime failed to resolve anything. After one of the characters vanished, the anime just ended. Basically, the anime just ended about 3/5 into the manga storyline (kinda like Kenshin). This is where the anime gets the bad score; it just kinda dropped dead halfway in and left viewers on edge expecting more episodes only to sadly leave them all dissapointed. I highly recommend reading the manga for anyone that has only watched the series and wants to see how it ends (though I'm not giving the manga's ending a perfect score, it's definetely better than the anime's which has no ending and just suddenly stops for no reason).
Music - 9. This anime has one of the best OST's I've heard. Doesn't fill the CD with a bunch of junk songs just to fill in the space. You'll be satisfied.
Characters - 10. WOW THEY ACTUALLY AGE!!! haha. This anime covers about 3-4 years I believe, and the characters actually age! Wow, when it first starts out Shindo is a cute little boy then as the anime progresses, he slowly grows up into a teenager. I personally didn't notice the change that quickly until I saw the flashback episodes and I was shocked by how the characters had changed without my knowledge; very nicely done! And the personalities are all unique and enjoyable (except certain characters that I thought deserved a punch to the face). They are very well developed but in the anime due to it's abrupt ending, the characters never really reach their ephiphany unlike the manga.
Graphics - 9 very well drawn, this anime had a fairly good budget and the artists worked very hard. It's not the best I've seen, but still up at the top.
Recommended? No. Unless you plan to read the manga where the anime left off after, I don't suggest watching the anime because it will always leave you thinking about what happened, and not in the good way. This anime just stops with no resolution and it's a real dissapointment because the story wasn't all that bad. If the anime had just finished up the series I probably would have given this anime a 8-9ish score.
Honey and Clover was an interesting show combining the likes of slice of life, romance and comedy. It started off predictably enough with an introduction to all the main characters.
Story-wise, there was a nice, slow build up even though at times it felt like it was going nowhere. It has a very solid plot (for once) and a story that won't leave you confused.
Characters here are multi-layered and highly enjoyable to watch. All of the major characters have a serious and humorous side and it broke up the monotony of the sometimes, overly serious love-triangles forming up during the show.
Animation was nice. Very cute and brightly colored as expected from J.C. Staff. Understandably it can be off-putting to some, but I found the bright colors reflected the youth of the characters. I noticed that when they showed elements of themselves that were 'maturing' the scenes became darker or more morose, as in scenes involving rain or walking a barely lit street. This was a nice touch.
Music was rather distracting at first, but soon after, you realise that it was rather fitting for the maturing characters. Nicely done opening credits complimented Yuki's OP "Dramatic."
I enjoyed Honey and Clover and even if it isn't excellent, it's still a damn sight better than some of the other shows out there. Romance fans would enjoy this as I did.
An excellent series, period. One of the best I've seen in a long while. I think the best term to use to describe this series would be 'well-rounded', in almost all aspects.
First, the art, utilized excellent use of color. Well balanced photographic direction. Excellent animation sequences during action scenes. Overall I thought the art really drew the viewer into the feel of the show.
The story was great, by using all of the major aspects of film (drama, comedy, action, and romance), it made it hard to find something about the series not to like. The only small details that were mildly un-desirable, I would say, would have to be the repetitive dialog and the occasional monologues. Other than that the series really held on to my interest, I could never wait to see what happened next.
Throughout watching this series, I don't think there was one intro or closing theme song that I didn't like. I especially loved the closing music to the final season (Ska in Japanese is bad a#$).
I also like how the characters were introduced and how they maintained their personalities throughout the series. The back stories were always a treat as well.
I would usually recommend a series in direct relation to the genre. But, again, since this series is so well-rounded I'll say this : if you like anime at all, WATCH THIS ONE! I doubt that you will be disappointed by it.
I always thought of Trigun as an intense action-packed anime filled with explosions and guns blasting through enemies. But I found out it was a western gunslinger anime, filled with comedy and morals.
Plot: The plot is pretty straightforward - the life of a great gunman, Vash the Stampede. Who doesn't know his name? With $60 billion on his head, everyone wants to take him down to claim the prize. The anime goes on through hilarious events first starting off as bounty hunters mistaking each other for Vash the Stamped to Vash tricking thieves and robbers in the most unexpected ways. During the pre-mid story, the anime becomes much more emotionally intense, defying morals such as punishing and judging others. The ride of Trigun is funny, exciting, intense, emotionally, over-dated but fresh. However, the ending was not as good as many people have commented, therefore it is the only reason why this anime got a 9.
Animation: I have to admit, this anime is old. There are no 3-D alternations or SFX-calligraphic effects, but at least it's original. For a western anime it brings out an good environment and feel to the it: a big ol' desert planet. The girls in the anime aren't as pretty or dressed eloquently as other animes...(heheh), but I don't think it's much of a romantic anime anyways.
Music: I loved the ride of the electric guitar for the introduction and the intermissions, however the ending music had a guy singing very badly and I always skipped it.
Characters: There are very "round" characters in this anime as many of them change throughout the series. However, the main character Vash the Stampede is always the same: a goofy idiot but changes into a serious, badass gunslinger if necessary. I can say he's also a extreme pacifist, always avoiding to kill someone (and if someone dies, he cries like a baby). There are Milly and Meryl, two insurance girls that follow Vash on his journey so he won't cause too much "damage", a cool and collected wannabe-priest Wolfwood who carries a giant cross that is "full of mercy" and other characters, evil and good.
Overall, I gave this anime a 9. It has a lot of strengths in its characters, morals, themes, motifs, and symbols. At the same time, it has a lot of action, comedy, and a bit of romance, so this anime is well-packed and ready to go. Only if the ending was bad, this anime would be considered an excellent anime to recommend to any action and comedy fans.
I have to say One Piece is one of the most overrated anime of all time.
The Good: One Piece was somewhat interesting at the start, with the pirate action anime theme grabbing my attention. The Alabasta arc was actually kind of interesting and enjoyable at parts. Zoro (or Zolo for those who watch the English dub) is a good character with an interesting background. His 3 sword attack style is pretty cool and usually makes for a good fight. Sanji is also cool to watch in a fight with his kicks. Smoker (or Chaser) and Teshigi are also good characters.
The Bad: When there is an overrall plot to advance, finding One Piece, it would be nice to see the story make some progress to finding the damn treasure. Instead it seems like the story gets caught up in other, endless, plot lines and forgets the main character's goal. Speaking of the main character, Luffy is probably one of the worst and most annoying anime stars. He is just too much of a goody-goody and idiotic goof off to be taken seriously as the lead role. Most of the other characters in this anime are also fairly plain or downright unbearable to watch. I get the whole "follow your dreams" theme but it has been done better and in a more interesting way. The music is nothing to brag about, and its bad sign when such a long running series does not produce a huge hit (while Naruto, Bleach, and D Gray Man constantly produce great OPs and EDs). The art is pretty crappy, even when compared to the '90s. I do not like the character design as it only contributes to how stupid the characters seem.
Overall, this anime is just not very entertaining. I stopped watching shortly after Alabasta because it just seemed to make no real progress and continually got weaker by the episode. The characters also continually got more and more annoying. If you want to watch a long action anime there are better ones out there (Naruto, Yuyu Hakusho, or Bleach). One Piece is just a neverending story that should have ended long ago.
Yes, Fushigi Yuugi is a melodramatic shoujo drama (soap opera might be a better term), complete with quite a few cliches of the genre. Anyone with an aversion for romance, melodrama, and the like, may want to think twice before considering this series. But you know what? I simply loved it.
Fushigi Yuugi's overall plot can probably best be described as The Neverending Story meets El-Hazard. The story itself occurs in a book entitled "The Universe of the Four Gods", and as one reads the book, the adventure becomes real. Miaka, a young school girl, along with her friend, Yui, discovers the book kept hidden away in a library. As the two begin to read, they are suddenly teleported into the strange world within the book.
The story line, though, is both one of the series' greatest strengths and greatest weakness. It takes a full 52 episodes to tell Miaka's quest, and for people that enjoy the series, this is quite a blessing. However, at the same, the length is also a detriment. Some parts of the series really begin to drag, and the same plot devices are used over and over to the point of tedium. Miaka and Tamahome's relationship is the best example of this. One minute they're a happy couple, and the next they're splitting up. Then they're back again, only to break up again. This of course, is accompanied by melodramatic cries of "Miaka!" "Tamahome!" "Miaka!" "Tamahome!" "Miaaaaaaakaaaa!" "Tamahoooomeeee!". I honestly couldn't count the number of times this went on. It was a bit excessive, to say the least.
While this series has no shortage of shoujo-style romance, and quite a few dramatic moments as well, there is also a decent mix of fantasy, comedy, and action. Fantasy, because of the mystical nature of the series, comedy thanks to liberal use of super-deforming, and action because whenever the Seishi clash, there's always more than a few scuffles.
The bottom line is, if you enjoy shoujo drama, fantasy, or comedy, then you'll probably love this series. But for anyone who prefers more shounen-oriented anime, or for that matter, may not have time to watch the whole thing, might be better off leaving Fushigi Yuugi alone.
Souichiro and Bob want to rule their new school, but just as they begin cracking heads, their plan is shot to hell. First there’s the Natsume sisters and their Juuken Club. If the older sister, Maya, isn’t kicking their ass, then the younger sister, Aya, is trying to force feed Souichiro and make him her husband. Then there’s the Student Executive Council that sends executioners to “educate” anyone who questions the council’s authority! Their education is just beginning!