After a break from reviewing, lets dive into something popular; time for Fruits Basket.
Fruits Basket is about Tohru Honda who starts the series off homeless thanks to a combination of her mother dying and her grandfather not being able to look after her due to renovation work on his house, less than five minutes in and it's not looking good but she seems to have boundless optimism despite her situation.
Anyway, it's during this homeless period that she meets up with Yuki Sohma who lives in a big house nearby with relatives Shigure and later Kyo; unfortunately due to a series of clumsy moments, Tohru accidentally discovers the secrets of the Sohma family, which is that they transform into animals from the Chinese Zodiac when hugged by members of the opposite gender.
This actually works in Tohru's favor as she gets to stay in the big house in order to not let out the secret she's just found out and the rest of the series is meeting up with the rest of the family, along with some raw emotional family feuds along the way.
I actually enjoyed watching Fruits Basket because the anime kept it's balance of heavy drama and comedy fairly equal, the manga that continues til the story's end is a different problem.
When the manga continued, it introduced a load of characters that either made the story more complicated or had no business being created to begin with, not helped by the art style that makes these characters look so similar to the Sohma family.
Another problem is that the plot is stupid and the motives and actions of one Akito Sohma are unjustified and selfish to the point of wishing the character would die. Equally Tohru Honda comes across as the Mary Sue type, which is a much hated character archetype, but thankfully escapes it thanks to a well done ending.
So while Fruits Basket is a sweet series, it's actually better in it's anime format as it doesn't bombard you with angst heavy scenarios.
Dub is top notch and is frequently listed in a top ten dubs throughout the internet.
Final Verdict: It's a decent series but needs some fine tuning to be better. Cutting half the cast and ridding some of the angsty subplots would benefit this series greatly.
A-Z Review season is over and were back to regular old reviewing so lets celebrate by reviewing a crappy OVA from the 1980s, Circuit Angel.
Circuit Angel tells the story of Mariko, a rebellious school girl with a love for motorcycles. Unfortunately this passion draws her into a race against a jerkass rich boy who won't leave Mariko alone because she is connected to some former bike racer who accidentally killed someone, and also because he wants to prove to his father that the rider is the one who decides the outcome and not the machine.
This OVA is horrible, it constantly wastes so much time trying to set up the big race at the end that it fails to properly introduce the characters and give us any reason to support them. Mariko seems to follow a strict template for female characters in the 80s and early 90s but you get the feeling she was destined for a better anime; equally I think that it was also meant to be more adult, the so called flashback Raita has about the accident is poorly choreographed as the person who died has such a wussy crash that the guy must've been made of glass, and this was the ultra violent anime era so no excuses really, although you still get some nudity for backup.
It's not that difficult to make motorsports anime look awesome especially the likes of Initial D and over the top karting anime Capeta. I think the main issue with Circuit Angel is that they draw the bikes better than the rest of the anime.
Final Verdict: It's crap; a poorly structured story performed by a cast of bland characters set in an era that should've given it more to work with. Give it a miss, which is very easy because it's not available in the west, only online on Youtube.
We've now come to the end of the A-Z review season as a final send off the last vote are all Top Ten lists.
Top Ten Lists
Anime Related: Top Ten Best & Worst Magical Girl Costumes
Video Game Related: Top Ten Nintendo charact...
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Were now on the final review of the A-Z review season, and what better way to end than to return to an anime close to my heart, it's Zoids!
The story takes place on a colonized planet named Zi, about a boy named Van who one day discovers a mysterious girl and a robot dinosaur known as an Organoid. After naming the girl Fiona and the Organoid Zeke, Van accidentally activates a bigger robot known as a Zoid, which resembles a Beast Wars Transformer in non human shape, unfortunately this draws him into an ongoing war between two factions the Helic Republic & the Guylos Empire; with help from a mercenary named Irvine and a transporter named Moonbay, the group try and resolve the war while discovering Fiona's past.
Zoids is the anime that bridges the gap created between Gundam and Transformers, it's not quite as angsty as Gundam gets but not nearly as cheesy as Transformers, so the middle ground not only suits it well it makes it look like the better show of the three. The mechs look fantastic and look absolute genius in design, each incorporating it's own unique weapons; the characters are a mixed bag, nothing against the main characters per say and Raven is one of anime's best anti heroes, but the main villains like Prozen and later Hiltz are quite bland and not very interesting, this extends to the supporting cast as well, as most of them can't hold too many scenes on their own, exception given to Karl Schubaltz who is awesome. As for the action, it's pretty epic and not afraid to hold back on the violence, a couple of really dramatic scenes including Fiona screaming after Van gets shot as well as any scene with the Death Stinger & Death Saurer in are guaranteed to get your blood pumping.
It has funny moments as well, Moonbay's transporter song comes to mind as well as some of her mad schemes for getting out of situations including using her Gustav as a wedding car.
There are some things that Zoids doesn't do well in, again it's supporting cast isn't the best at holding scenes together, some plots tend to have a few holes left in them and the CGI is a little shaky but overall it's a good series, decent dub with some memorable performances from Raven especially.
Final Verdict: It's fantastic to watch and fills a void left by Transformers and Gundam when they aren't around, bit shaky with it's support cast and plot holes are often ignored but it's still an amazing anime.
Free Trivia: The franchise actually started in 1982 as Mechabonica, an original model kit from that era goes for thousands.
Were coming to the last couple of reviews in this A-Z so lets kick off Y with Yatterman.
Yatterman started in the 70s as a follow up to the Time Bokan series produced by Tatsunoko which features a boy and a girl team fighting against an evil trio not much different to Team Rocket using robot animals.
Yatterman is about a boy and a girl team fighting against an evil trio not much different to Team Rocket using robot animals......
Yeah the shows don't change much but lets see why Yatterman went on the longest compared to the others. Well male lead Gan-Chan and female lead Ai-Chan are actually a couple, a very close couple despite Ai-Chan doing most of the work, which makes this formulaic series work better than your standard brother and sister or just friends team.
Yes I said formulaic and boy does it run like clockwork, a typical episode will involve an issue of some kind, usually the Dorombo Gang involved in a cheesy crime of some description using a mecha, now this is Team Rocket's spiritual ancestor, we have the lady in charge Doronjo, the brains Boyacky and the muscle Tonzura. With the evil plot taking place it's up to Gan & Ai to stop the Dorombo Gang, doing so with a robot dog dressed like a fire marshal called Yatter-Wan.
Gan & Ai also have some toys of they're own as Gan uses a Kendama while Ai uses a cattle prod as their weapons of choice. Once the battle gets going Yatter-Wan summons a load of mini robots to attack the Dorombo gang which usually wins the battle for Yatterman. Afterwards the Dorombo gang get chewed out by their boss and literally blast off again, which is actually where the term comes from and not Team Rocket.
I have to say, for a show so strict on formula, it is still able to remain entertaining, it helps that the mini-robots change every week and other animal robots come into the story as it goes along, but the chemistry is so strong between characters it rarely makes mistakes, my only real criticisms are a lack of localization for the west, the 70s original hasn't aged that well and the late 00s reboot should've come back sooner.
Final Verdict: Definitely worth the effort of finding a fansub for. I'd recommend trying both versions of the anime but I prefer the reboot to the original.
