Hi I'm Dranzerstorm
You may remember me as a regular contestant on the caption battle contest.
Welcome to Retro Retrospective, my world dedicated to the old guard of the Otaku world; expect some reviews of the old & obscure, and in-depth geeky knowledge with the occasional top ten and I now have a logo.
Little info about me
Well I'm British and I'm in to all things animated and nostalgia.
I've grown up with every cartoon going and have watched hundreds of anime.
Oh and to answer a question I was asked once, no I don't wear glasses in real life, I would wear Loke's sunglasses though.
First off, I would like to offer my thanks to theotaku and my fans for the showcase on Facebook, it really inspired me to write more and hopefully I can continue providing my usual British wit of writing to the website, so to celebrate I'm pulling out one of my biggest lists, the 100 cartoons may have been cancelled but this list and it's follow up list showcases the worst animations of all time. Cartoons & Anime will both be accepted and requests are open to suggest any series I don't list in the dishonorable mentions to be added to the main list. Without further interruptions these are the dishonorable mentions, spared from the Top Ten list. Yeah these shows are that bad
Android Ana Maico 2010: It's soooooooo boring, a good looking character doesn't mean it'll be used for a good story.
Comic Party: I still hate Comic Party with a passion, a mixture of the most annoying fans mixed with it's most hypocritical critics.
Mega Babies: Rugrats on acid channeling Ren & Stimpy.
Matt Hatter Chronicles: A story where you enter the movie world to fight B-Movie monsters sounds like an idea that couldn't possibly go wrong; yet it did and this was the result.
Slugterra: Turning slugs into a new collectable toy range was never going to catch on, not to mention scraping the barrel of ideas.
Teen Titans Go: Despite all the terrible things that have been said about it, I don't find it as bad as some of the other shows I've seen.
Fanboy & Chum Chum: As long as this show exists Nickelodeon will always be haunted by the fact that it picked this over Adventure Time.
Sanjay & Craig: But in all seriousness Nickelodeon deserve the pain it gets for all it's poor decisions and this Regular Show ripoff is just another one of those crappy shows.
Uncle Grandpa: I don't hate it, I know it looks really terrible but I just don't hate it.
Almost Naked Animals: Has got the humor of Spongebob, at it's worst it's atrocious, at it's best it's barely funny.
Kung Fu Dino Posse: A shameless Ninja Turtles ripoff
Johnny Test: A show that doesn't deserve to stay on air for the length of time that it has.
Elliot Kid: Over active imagination is one thing, make believing everything like you're on drugs is just wrong.
Idol Densetsu Eriko: All the worst qualities of Jem and the Holograms.
Dragon Booster: The worst you can offer from a CGI action show.
Long Runners: They did good in the past but seasonal rot is still rot.
4Kids: More a company problem than their products.
Failed Pilots: At least they realized they failed, Allen Gregory, Bubsy, Doozy Bots, Saban Moon, Battletoads, Defenders of Dynatron City, The Groovenians are all just examples.
Preschool Shows: You know my rules by now, I can't review preschool shows because the target audience are too young to defend it. If I had my way, Peppa Pig would be the worst cartoon of all time.
Video Brinquedo: Their work consists of copying popular animated films so horrifically it makes China facepalm in disgust but they do films and were looking at animated series.
So that gives you a fair idea of what to expect, now the fun bit is seeing what else is possible to dig up from you guys, the viewer, thanks again everybody.
Now lets try something mainstream, mainly because it leads to something more significant, so today lets talk about The Croods.
The Croods is a prehistoric animated feature about a family of cavemen who live a very sheltered life until the eldest daughter Eep ventures out of the cave one day and discovers Guy, a young caveman with great ideas who introduces her to new things like fire. Eep's father Grug, being the overprotective parent, grounds her, only for the cave they've been living in to fall apart following an earthquake forcing them to look for a new cave in a strange new land opened to them by said quake. It's only after a few more incidents that Eep calls Guy to help them navigate these lands, which makes Grug all the more jealous when his ideas get ignored over the new things Guy keeps coming up with. Eventually Grug loses it and fights Guy only to discover why Guy acts the way he does and through a series of events, learns not to be overprotective and accepts the new life he's come to learn.
That's pretty much it story wise, very simple story, not much to challenge you mentally. The art design is creative as standard for Dreamworks; the comedy is okay for it's target audience but the story has been done before and better by other shows.
I mention target audience for comedy and that's where Croods falls down the most;
The British Film rating system uses U - Universal for everyone up to 18 - For adults only with PG (Parental Guidance), 12 & 15 ratings in between. Croods was rated U - Universal for everyone but most recent releases have carried the PG rating including Frozen and How to Train your Dragon. PG's are more marketable because it seems less childish to an adult who ultimately has to pay for the movie ticket and they are the ones who are going to be the critics not the children watching it; it also taps into the young gen X adult market who view animation as a major part of their social development and aiming too young chases them away in an instant.
Croods is entertaining to kids but only kids and fails to tap into a wider audience, something I expected better from the likes of Dreamworks.
It's worth one watch but after that you're not going to see it evolve.
Now lets dive into something different with a visual novel anime called We Without Wings.
We Without Wings or Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai if you prefer, focuses on the lives of three male protagonists named Takashi, Shusuke & Hayato respectively.
Takashi is a shy student whose illness seems to send him to a fantasy world where he's a noble knight.
Shusuke is a part timer for the Alexander restaurant as well as a freelance book reviewer.
And finally Hayato is a so called fixer, who is part of a night time gang, although he doesn't exactly choose to be with them they just seem to turn up.
Each story seems to progress normally as Takashi tries to get by with a high functioning girlfriend as well as getting over his own shyness, Shusuke gets dragged into the struggles of an amateur writer of whom he wrote a review about, while Hayato gets reluctantly dragged into a gang warfare while locating a girl's bike. Despite the stories being very different to each other, they are somehow connected as all three characters seem to know a young girl who they seem to all live with.
The anime was originally a visual novel from the makers of Shuffle which tells us very quickly what kind of anime to expect but what it doesn't tell you is how well the story works; the individual stories worked on their own and could've continued working that way without the big twist mid series or the forced fan service which at times borders on uncomfortable.
I find that a shame, at the moment I'm at a crossroads with anime in general, as I believe 80% of anime have run out of ideas and popular shows are over hyped but the other 20% which includes this anime still keep me going and while it did end up throwing logic out the window, I still came away with a good experience which I can take to future shows.
Final Verdict: If you can stomach the poor attempts at fan service then you'll enjoy the story We Without Wings has to offer. The dub is normal and the art is incredible as is standard with a visual novel anime and you even get some decent comedy even if some of it is a bit random.
Okay, back to some really serious reviewing, no more distractions, except I want more hot apple Drambuie. No! Reviewing time and I shouldn't encourage drinking.
(Respect your country's drinking laws and drink responsibly)
Now for some Rugrats.
Rugrats was one of the starter titles for Nickelodeon's Nicktoons, a show told from the point of view of a group of infants if they were actually speaking and a secondary plot often featuring their parents. A typical episode would feature a problem that only a baby would understand or a situation where one of the parents does something and the babies get involved or the antagonist of the group Angelica trying to get her way, the show was a long runner for Nickelodeon until Spongebob began and even went beyond with a spinoff tween show.
Rugrats as a concept is nothing new, especially when you consider that the Muppets did the whole babies thing years earlier but the main fundamental difference is that the adults are not only shown but are often involved with an episode plot, and it's the adults that really sell the show to a higher audience when you consider the amount of hidden adult jokes within the series; this one below as an example.
I'll let the viewers work that one out.
The point is Rugrats sold so well to an adult audience, particularly those who are parents because they can understand every joke being said and have probably dealt with the situations on show, and with my generation becoming parents themselves, they now have a new appreciation for Rugrats as they now understand what their parents found so funny.
It's that special kind of generation link that makes Rugrats one of the best cartoons of all time and even if the content of the show is heavily dated, the situations and plots aren't.
So if you think today's Nickelodeon is a mess of mindless shows with no redeeming qualities and toilet jokes with it's only decent showing being Legend of Korra, then take a trip back in time and remember when Nicktoons actually did a good job.
It seems inevitable I would review this eventually given that it's come up a few times, so lets dive into Sailor Moon's only decent rival, Wedding Peach.
The Angel World is under attack by devils so it's up to the Goddess Aphrodite to call upon the Love Angels to stop them, this brings us to Momoko and her friends who get selected to perform this task whose families happen to be part of the Wedding business in Photography, Dress Making and Flowers respectively. This proves to be convenient as Momoko, Yuri & Hinagiku don their Wedding Gowns and become the Love Angels, although at full power they switch the Gowns for mini-skirts of power and the rest pretty much sells itself.
This anime is very cheesy but surprisingly successful during it's run and still stands as Sailor Moon's only decent rival, mainly because the show was a lot simpler and easier to digest as the cast stayed fairly small and the story was very easy to follow and while it took a lot of pages from the book of Moon, it still felt fresh and original, mainly because of how well the costumes were designed for the Angels; a lot of shojo works, especially Magical Girl shows are often defined by the costumes it's lead characters wear and having not just one but two iconic costumes instantly makes the show more marketable, a trick later picked up by future shows and even shows of today.
Sailor Moon will always be on top in the Magical Girl stable but how it's descendants follow is more defined by what the first rival does and a show like Wedding Peach has enough content to deliver but makes enough mistakes to know what doesn't work which proves more useful than what you can learn from Sailor Moon.
As for the dub.............................Yeah it's one of the worst dubs ever, don't even try and watch it, just stick to the Japanese.
Final Verdict: Ignore the dub and you should be fine, Wedding Peach does serve as a guilty pleasure but it's not as embarrassing as you might be thinking, give it a try you might be surprised.
