As promised here is my review of the Vision of Escaflowne.
The 90s were the renaissance of Anime as some of the most memorable in history were created but kind of lost in the bunch is Escaflowne. Escaflowne is about a girl named Hitomi who's interest in divination lands her in the mystic world of Gaea with a winged Prince named Van Fanel who was slaying a dragon at the time of the incident.
Gaea is at war as the deadly Zaibach Empire attempt to take over the world so it's up to Van to awaken the mecha Escaflowne and along with the knight Allen Schezar, fight back and save the world while Hitomi is stuck in the middle of everything when her powers somehow react with Escaflowne.
Escaflowne can be anything from memorable to forgettable depending on your experience with the series, the first half of the series was fantastic, it showcased some great action, some great suspense and provided a story which was really setting up for a climatic finish but then it got all complicated and kind of fell apart in an attempt to look more intelligent than it really was during the second half, even the extra villains and some of the side characters came across as bland and uninteresting but what really let the series down was the total lack of chemistry between the leads Van and Hitomi. True story now, the Escaflowne Manga featured a glasses wearing school girl who became a busty blonde when she made contact with Escaflowne, and she suited the franchise much better than Anime Hitomi ever did. I guess I'm saying that I don't really like Hitomi as a character, her design compared to other female anime characters at the time was bland, her personality was dull and she never really delivers what the fans want. Okay I don't expect her to be a femme fatale like Faye Valentine, a rambunctious girl like Aisha Clan Clan or a proper audience surrogate character like Meryl Stryfe, but at least those female characters stood out. Hitomi is lucky to be remembered and Escaflowne isn't exactly well remembered to begin with.
Dub is pretty good and the art style is a little dated and a little hard to ignore the big pointy noses, the music is by Yoko Kanno who never fails to bring in viewing numbers.
Final Verdict: Take it or leave it, there's enough to enjoy in the series but if you really want to avoid some of the anime's shortcomings you may want to skip a lot of the second half.
*Dusts off the Endless Wardrobe*
Welcome to the Endless Wardrobe, this feature is basically what I use when I need to make a serious update, a.k.a taking off my reviewing face and character face and speaking with my own face.
During July I'll be on hiatus as I'll be on a long holiday. I may or may not do a one off review during this time but considering what's going on it's unlikely I'll have the time as I'll be welcoming my best friend to the UK.
So for the whole of June is the "Road to Summer Special" where you can expect a post everyday til the end of June featuring the like of.
Retro Retrospective: Expect classic Anime Reviews starting with Escaflowne in the next few hours, loads of top tens and a run of cartoon reviews exploring spinoffs of popular franchises
Anime Walk of Fame: Returning from it's hiatus to bring you more characters to review including the end of the Pretty Cure run and a viewers choice special.
Victory Script: Victory Script returns with a bunch of short stories showcasing new characters.
The Fantasy Zone: New show, Voice Actor Focus will begin it's run as well as your favorites from UAFC as Squid Girl fights the Inklings and more episodes of Heaven & Hell including a rebooted 80s cartoon and a cartoon special of underrated characters.
Look forward to all this and more, see ya next time.
I know Burn Up has been in extreme focus lately and I apologize in advance if you're getting sick of it but I promise you that this is the last review on this franchise for a while, I'll drop off some new anime to review in return later on but for now we have Burn Up Scramble to review.
Burn Up Scramble is a complete reboot of it's predecessors W & Excess, the characters Rio, Maya, Lilica & Yuji remain in the show but each sport new looks and art design either closely resembling their previous designs or going completely left field with new looks; I won't bore you with the details of the story because nothing in regards to the story is really any different from it's predecessors apart from the endings of course, so instead I'll go through the things it does right and the stuff it does wrong.
Pros
If you've never seen the previous incarnations of the Burn Up franchise then you won't feel betrayed by the decision to make this series to begin with. The show is still fun to watch and the action scenes keep to the franchise's theme of police action series.
Cons
The characters are atrocious, even if you didn't know about the previous series; the main three girls while perfectly okay action wise, their personalities really don't match the setting, in fact they look like they belong in different anime all together. Rio is too American which is a strange phrase to use but she reminds me of a character from Sex in the City, made more obvious in the dub and not helped by the fact that she's obsessed with romance which really cheapens her character. Maya looks like she belongs in School Days which if you've seen you'll understand what I'm talking about, this isn't even a violent anime and Maya looks like she would cause more blood to squirt than a standard Elfen Lied episode, made worst by the fact that her quiet, soft spoken personality makes her look more psychotic than sympathetic and finally Lilica looks like the character in a school anime who you hate the most because she's so annoying.
Overall that's kind of a sad thing. The Burn Up franchise is many things, cheesy, ecchi, action packed and silly but overall enjoyable, and what made it work was it's cast of characters with their colorful personalities and striking designs made even the most negative viewer happy. Scramble sucked up everything that made it stand out, played a few characters out of their comfort zone and overall made a forgettable show that never really felt comfortable in it's own skin.
Final Verdict: It saddens me to end my run of the Burn Up franchise on a low but Scramble really took away everything I loved about this franchise and ruined the whole experience. There's barely anything to salvage from this train wreck of an anime.
Remember I said I'd review this at a later date? Well here's your later date as I review it right now. Lets Review Burn Up Excess.
In a slight mirror image of the Burn Up W story, a number of crimes take place that hide a much deeper underlying plot only this time more episodes are given to flesh out the plot better and make the payoff from the final episode a much more rewarding experience than the climax Burn Up W offers.
The cast is exactly the same as before so I need not repeat what they do but there are now more episodes to offer and more opportunities to expand on the character's personalities and dive into their backgrounds a bit, which works well with the likes of Maya, Rio, Nanvel and Maki but Yuji and Lilica stay grounded as a result but then again Yuji being the only guy in a group of sexy policewomen you're never going to be anything other than a pervert which is flanderized to it's maximum in this show, in fact flanderization is the perfect way to sum up the experience as many of the character's already unique traits get maxed up even more, I suppose this was inevitable anyway being a longer series than Burn Up W and already gaining a reputation for obvious fan service which led to the creation of the legendary jiggle counter but at least they could've done was have a little restraint.
Overall Burn Up Excess still maintains the fun Burn Up W was trying to accomplish with it's tiny episode count and succeeds in telling the story it wanted to tell by expanding and fine tuning the details that Burn Up W used in their own storyline. It's living proof that you can make an OVA series into a decent TV Series and while Excess does push flanderization to it's limits it never goes too far that the quality suffers for it.
Dub is similar to Burn Up W but voice cast changes have improved the quality of their performances.
Final Verdict: This is the anime that Burn Up wanted to be in the first place and succeeds in all areas, while it's hard to over look the flanderization of the characters, it doesn't spoil the experience on offer.
Sometimes I need to be reminded of why I watch anime so I dived into my retro collection and dug out an old police anime from the 90s, this review is Burn Up W.
First a history lesson, in the past the Burn Up franchise started as a one off OVA that rounded off the ultra violent era of anime perfectly, this then became the four episode ova were reviewing today followed by a 13 episode TV series and an alternate universe TV series also 13 episodes.
Burn Up W is about a specialist police task force called Warrior consisting of Busty Martial Arts Master Rio, Gun Crazed Lunatic Maya, Perverted Pilot Yuji, Perky Little Hacker Lilica and Genki Tech Scientist (who probably has several law suits from Studio Gainax) Nanval; all of whom are led by the deviously cruel Maki who is apparently the same Maki from the very first Burn Up which is odd because that Maki is blonde and looks suspiciously like Rio.
Anyway the first mission is a hostage situation but the four guys doing it are only after weird requests like demanding a Baseball Manager to publicly castrate himself or asking an Idol Singer to bungee jump naked, in the meantime the proper terrorists who setup the whole hostage situation attempt to try and market a so called Virtual Drug by testing it on certain hostages behind the scenes.
Team Warrior go into action and deliberately mess around with the terrorists demands with Rio pretending to be the naked Idol Singer to grab the Terrorists attention and take them out, that's just episode one.
Being honest episode two is the worst, the quality is dire, the story barely makes any sense and the sound quality in the dub is awful, and how a Virtual Idol is significant to the whole Virtual Drug thing is not explained and the attack android the enemies have, comes out of no where, not to mention Nanvel building a cheap knock off of EVA Unit 01 which explains the early joke on lawsuits.
The final two part episode takes things in a more serious approach as a traitor within the Police Ranks stages a terrorist attack in the Police Building killing Rio's best friend along with many other officers. Warrior are deployed to take out the terrorists and win but a curious epilogue left more questions as the villains use their influence over the President to disband everyone investigating the Virtual Drug and it kind of leaves it on that cliff hanger.
It's clear from the epilogue that this was meant to last longer than it did but thankfully Burn Up Excess manages to satisfy the fans hunger for this series which will be reviewed at a later date.
Burn Up W is just plain fun, the first episode alone is my favorite first episode of any anime, it knew it had to grab attention and grab attention it did, while episode two is horrible the final two episodes that round this off deliver an episode that perfectly balances drama, action and comedy and knows not to over do it on all ends.
With only one duff episode out of four, Burn Up W was onto something special which is why a new series was green lit with the same cast of characters. The dub is great, the art style really shows great detail at times and the overall run of the story is very entertaining to watch.
Final Verdict: Burn Up W is plain fun and is the diamond polished from the rock of it's older sister the original Burn Up. While the second episode is very much a miss and the epilogue adds more questions, the other episodes more than make up for it.
