Viewing List: Sep 29, 2005

My current viewing list is at the bottom. This is where you can post comments.
I have some other shows I haven't started watching for various reasons. No series have ended lately so it's been a little longer between reviews.

Fafner
Planetes
Cyberteam in Akihabara
Blue Seed
Requiem For the Darkness
Gravitation
Patlabor TV
Demon Lord Dante
Corrector Yui (VIZ stopped releases)
Soar High Izami
Arjuna
Knight Hunters Weiz Kruz Season 1
Virus Buster Serge
Decendants of Darkness

Marmalade Boy 7/10

I used to think wearing a school uniform might not have been too bad. Marmalade Boy has shown me the dark side of prescribed fashion and I am now grateful I never had to wear green plaid pants with a grey blazer or a uniform the colour of surplus army tents. Yikes!

With 76 episodes Marmalade Boy is certainly a handful to get through. I also believe this is the longest series I've reviewed so far. On the technical side I liked the character designs in this show and it looks great. The quality of the animation remained about the same over 76 eps. so I must be impressed. The opening theme was great but the rest of the music was only so-so. This is mainly due to the horrible Doo-doo-doo-dah-doo-dah-doo version of the OP theme used at times. I can't stand that version and it unbalanced my furies. The VAs were great but the female main character's (Miki) voice put me on edge at times. This show aired from 1994 to 1995 by the way.

So, you've heard of Marmalade Boy in fanboy legends so what is it? It's the story of two families living together after divorcing then re-marrying each other. Each couple has a teenage child (Miki and Yuu) and the story is about the romance that develops between the kids and the various romances their friends are involved in. This romantic comedy show does have some real good parts. The story of Miki's best friend and her relationship with a teacher at the school and the class president is probably the most interesting in the series. Yuu's first rival and Miki's childhood friend also has a pretty good story throughout the series.

I can't say the same for the main romantic plot though. For the first 2 seasons things move along alright but in the third, storylines begin to feel repetitive and the plot becomes a little ridiculous. Because of this 3rd season madness I found myself wishing that Miki and Yuu would suffer some sort of tragic accident leading to an interesting funeral episode or something. Not to wish death on them but....I really got irritated.

I have to recommend this show to anyone who likes a good romantic comedy but beware parts of the 3rd season as I got a little pissed off at Miki's stupidity.

Sakura Taisen: Ecole de Paris 5/10

The phenomena that is Sakura Taisen has spawned 5 games. Here's the OAV created about the characters from the 3rd game. Have you played the games? You have? LIAR!

This OAV is REALLY geared to the people who've played the 3rd game. These 3 episodes act as a kind of prelude to the game, introducing how the girls met and joined the Paris version of the demon-fighting team familiar from the rest of the Sakura Taisen (Wars) universe. Of course we do get the guy from the regular Sakura Taisen cast who arrives as the trainer for the new team so we're not entirely in new territory here.

Art-wise this show looks amazing, I mean just awesome. I love the character designs and the girls look quite original compared to the ones in the other series. The music was OK and the end themes are sung by the voice-actresses which is always a nice touch. This OAV also has the best CG mech fight in the whole Sakura Taisen series as far as I'm concerned. (I've seen all but the second Ecole the Paris series).

As far as the plot is concerned that's where this show really falls apart. Some of the characters are well introduced but others are not. The girl with the black hair is barely in the show. There also seem to be big gaps in time between the episodes that aren't explained. Since this show is more for fans of the games this could be forgiven but the original series was the same and it was MUCH better organized when introducing the characters and such. One thing I really liked was the ditzy main character Erica Fontaine, but I usually like the ditzy characters.

I can recommend this show to fans of the other Sakura Taisen shows and the games and anyone who can forgive a crappy plot for great animation, otherwise keep clear of this one.

Magical Meow Meow Taruto 3/10

The madness ends. What the hell was this show trying to accomplish?

I can appreciate that there are some anime produced specifically for kids. I can appreciate that some of these shows are good enough to warrant normal anime fan attention. I can appreciate that Bandai Entertainment releases shows on DVD in North America that should appeal to anime buyers in this market. So WTF is up with this show?

Technically this show looks ok, it's not great but not bad. The music is OK and the voice acting is alright considering most of the characters are cats and have "meow" in damn near every sentence. Not much else to say here. Oh, I HATE the singers on the theme songs. I liked them in Azumanga Daioh but it got tired long ago. These 12 episodes aired in 2001.

As far as the plot goes I really found this show annoyingly paced. We meet the main character, a purple haired cat-girl named Taruto who lives with her spaced out owner Iori and his family as their pet. Or something. See, Taruto is cat-sized but looks human. She wears clothes, runs around and talks but the show deliberately dodges the question as to whether or not the humans can understand the cats. Taruto has some other cat-girl friends and most of the shows involve them having uninspired adventures. There IS a running plot here about Taruto maybe being a princess from some cat world and we see that she DOES have some odd powers but this plot isn't really advanced until the last 5 episodes or so.

I didn't care for 2 major things in this series.

1. The episodes seem slapped together, not much character development and the episodes feel....disjointed.

2. Taruto is retarded. She's like the kid in the helmet. A little ditzy can be cute. Mentally underdeveloped is just creepy.

I give this show a few points for how colourful it is and hope that the poor quality of this show doesn't spoil any plans for Bandai to release other shows of this nature in the future.

NOTE: I liked the purple DVD cases these DVD's came in but the small episode per DVD count and heroically creepy extras pissed me off.