We've come to the end of Digital Week and sadly I've not finished Log Horizon in time to review it, but no matter. This innovative cartoon more than makes up for it as we look at Reboot.
Now the opening Narration is better at explaining this show than me so here's the low down for you.
"I come from the Net. Through systems, people, and cities, to this place - Mainframe. My format, Guardian: To mend and defend. To defend my new found friends, their hopes and dreams, and to defend them from their enemies. They say The User lives outside the Net and inputs games for pleasure. No one knows for sure, but I intend to find out. ReBoot!"
Long story short we follow the life of Bob, a Guardian for the world of Mainframe, who along with, mentor Phong and friends Dot Matrix and her irritating brother, fight to protect Mainframe from the evils of Megabyte, a relatively simple plot but what really gives this series the edge is that this is the first ever full CGI cartoon ever made.
While it does look horribly dated now it was also CGI's infancy and no one expected to see it go anywhere, but then when Toy Story came along a year later it was a big enough phenomenon that it's the go to format for animated movies now. However on a TV level Reboot was more than just an early CGI mess of green people, as it was well backed up by a good story and exceptional voice work, something more important than getting the CGI to look nice.
If it wasn't for the fact that this was the first CGI cartoon, it would've been ridiculed for it's animation but as it stands now, it's a piece of archived history and while there has been talk of a revival, I don't think it needs one as they got it right first time.
Were coming to the end of Digital Week and were down to our final two reviews starting with Corrector Yui.
In a world where the internet is run by a huge network called COMNET, there will inevitably be people wanting to disrupt said network so this is when the Correctors come in, champions of defending the COMNET; one such Corrector is Yui, a computer illiterate young girl who gets dragged into fighting the viruses of the enemy organization Grosser by accident and becomes an online magical girl in the process.
Well this is certainly a unique idea, so much so that no one knows about this, seriously even the dub was made by complete unknowns, yet you go to any European Country (Not the UK) and most anime fans there will tell you who Corrector Yui is. It's a real shame because Corrector Yui as a Magical Girl series is quite underrated.
Apart from the fact that every transformation sequence can be taken dangerously out of context, Corrector Yui works by taking the Card Captor Sakura approach to the online world genre and running well with it, the art style is attractive, Yui is very approachable and the side characters do well to support the story but it does run longer than it needs to and the amount of times it plays safe doesn't really give it enough weight to challenge it's more popular rivals. So if you can find it, give it a try, but it's a safe bet that you'll likely forget this anime exists.
Final Verdict: A horribly underrated series but sadly the chances of this show getting another shot at the States is the same as admitting 4Kids is a good company.
Next up on Digital Week, an Anime Film that set a new standard for the Genre, this is Summer Wars.
OZ is a super advanced online system that controls every notable function that can be computerized on Earth, everything from basic communication and gaming right down to the serious business and government systems. In the meantime a maths genius named Kenji is drafted by his school friend Natsuki to pose as her fiancee for her Great Grandmother's 90th Birthday along with meeting the large extended family Natsuki belongs to.
During his visit Kenji is tricked into cracking the security code for the OZ mainframe which unleashes a rogue AI named Love Machine onto the network wreaking havoc on the system and disrupting a number of world services which gets worst by the minute.
It's up to Kenji and Natsuki's family to save the world using online battles of Martial Arts and Hanafuda in the truest Samurai Spirit that so follows the family.
Summer Wars is one of the best anime films you'll ever see, a unique blend of family bonding along with some of the best animation and action seen in a long time; you can tell that the same director worked on Digimon as you can see alot of the scenery of OZ was lifted and improved from the Digimon Movie.
The threat from the Love Machine AI is convincing and paints a haunting picture of what might happen if the world continues to put everything online, Skynet has nothing on this guy.
Also when watching King Kazma fight or seeing Natsuki take on Love Machine in Hanafuda, you see this film put to shame a lot of popular mainstream anime including many Shonen titles and most notably Yu-Gi-Oh.
My only complaint is that the dub is a bit lacking and is way more effective in Japanese.
Final Verdict: I've been an anime fan for close to 20 years now; from the earliest memories of wondering what Dragonball Ice Cream was on my holidays in Spain, why a Giant Panda in my Gameboy game is throwing Kettles and Buckets at me, the sheer happiness of seeing Sonic the Hedgehog on film leading to the Trailer of my first proper anime watching of Dirty Pair Flash to writing this review for Summer Wars and having just come back from an anime convention a few days ago, I now find myself in a position of witnessing an Anime Film that personifies the art form so perfectly that it irritates me that it didn't at least get nominated for an Oscar the year it was released. Summer Wars is an emotional roller coaster that offers the truest meanings of family, grouped with the limitless potential of human imagination to the surreal scenarios that no live action show could copy, the Holy Trinity of a Great Anime.
Summer Wars is great and all of you should watch it.
Next up on Digital week is Digimon Adventure 02.
I've already reviewed the first season of Digimon so lets see if the sequel does any better.
Trouble brews in the Digital World as the Digimon Emperor conquers the lands, but most of the digi-destined from season one have moved on and are three years older with not only higher commitments but no crests and digivices to use as the Dark Spires built in the Digital World block digivolving. Using a new Digivice and recruiting three new kids, TK and Kari enter the Digital World to stop the Digimon Emperor.
Now lets start with the elephant in the room which is the new kids which consists of Davis, who is so not exactly the same as Tai, Yolei who keeps the Tomboy trend going and Cody who personifies the quiet geek boy better than Izzy and Joe combined. Apart from Matt, the three new kids are essentially perfect copies of the six digi-destined that retired with Yolei filling in for both Sora & Mimi and Cody with Izzy & Joe respectively and canonically speaking as well.
So yeah, don't expect this series to be as ground breaking as the first season, but the first story arc delivers well enough that it's only a nit pick and at least Yolei manages to break her predefined character traits and become her own character. The second story arc still hits the same notes as the first arc if a little bit slower while the final story arc leads to a bit of an anti-climax and a sickeningly sweet epilogue worthy of a fanfiction writer.
So yeah a few niggles but still a worthy enough successor to the original series, voice work and charm still intact also.
Final Verdict: Lack of originality aside, Digimon Adventure 02 is worthy to be called a sequel and while the story gets a bit stale towards the end it doesn't take away the experience that Digimon always offers.
Next up on Digital Week is Dot Hack Sign, one of the founding anime of this genre based on the Namco game of the same name.
Dot Hack Sign is about a player named Tsukasa whom after logging into "The World" online game finds that he cannot leave and doesn't remember much on how he logged in to begin with or why he's even there. This leads to a lengthy search and mystery which all works itself out by the end of the series.
This show actually put me off the Dot Hack franchise; it bothers me that an anime based on a fantasy JRPG with a core storyline of being trapped in an online world or solving the mysteries behind certain incidents within said world, cannot seem to blend a serious mystery plot with the action elements it has open to itself. There are warriors with swords that can take down cavalry riders yet Dot Hack Sign is cursed with infinite amounts of dialogue and little to no action.
I know a series that relies on dialogue and character development can work, Aria the Animation does it perfectly but the setting allows that anime to work, Dot Hack Sign doesn't because the characters are designed to look like they should be fighting each other yet they don't.
Tsukasa is barely tolerable early on and if you went into the show expecting more than what you got then you'll be finished with it as early as episode 4 with 22 more still waiting to go.
If you can stomach the dreadfully slow pacing and the lack of action then you are rewarded with a great ending but tolerance for certain characters and a commitment is needed to fully finish this series, thankfully unlike Quantum which I reviewed last year, you are not required to know the games to understand what's going on.
Dub is average and can induce sleep so I recommend subtitles to absorb all the information on screen.
Final Verdict: An anime this beautiful looking and open to so many possibilities is stuck with it's slow and painful story and refuses to use the other elements the franchise is famed for. While the ending is beautiful and satisfying, the commitment to get there would be too much for some people and I only recommend it to those who enjoy reading novels which is where this anime should be instead of onscreen.
