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.
Well that was terrible
Fieg is part of a NATO combat unit until he gets thrusted into a fantasy world, with his team slaughtered he ends up crashing his mech and losing his memory. About a year so later he joins a princess in stopping an evil sorcerer who can summon monster armies at will with only the Legend of the Dragon Slayer capable of stopping him. Fieg reunited with his mech, sets out to destroy the sorcerer with Dragon Slayer Sword in hand.
This is terrible, I don't know who was put in charge of this but they clearly never heard of consistency of tone before. It's obvious they were looking for a dead serious dark fantasy but the lead characters act like children and it's hard to take them seriously when they goof off especially not long after quite a dramatic scene of death and destruction made even harder by the utterly poor music choices. Then the villains lose all dignity when the sorcerer becomes a tentacle monster and that's all folks you've just gone off the rails.
No dub, no problem, we don't want it.
Final Verdict: A dark fantasy that keeps leaving the lights on, structured poorly and incapable of keeping it's tone with poor music and even poorer characters. It's terrible don't watch it, game might be better?
Insert witty/insightful opening sentence here.
Taking place 15 years after the GXP saga, Kenshi Masaki finds himself in Geminar, a world at war involving mechanoids. With his other world physiology being far superior to Geminars, he starts off on the wrong side but after he fails to assassinate Princess Lashara, he gets captured but instead of putting him to death, the crafty princess uses him as an attendant as she feels making him an ally would turn the tide of war in her favour especially when his nice guy persona coupled with his superior abilities makes him the perfect worker but this being a Tenchi Muyo anime, it's clear all the girls fall for him.
I'll just come out and say this, this isn't my Tenchi Muyo. In Tenchi Muyo the series' broken sci fi setting was saved by some really well designed characters, War on Geminar has really poor substitutes for those characters and it's lengthy run time per episode is packed full of filler that serves only to remind you of the franchise it's from. In the end you feel duped because you feel like you got something trying to copy Tenchi Muyo instead of it being a new season of Tenchi Muyo and it's not the first time this has happened.
All that aside can it stand up on it's own without the franchise tag? ummm kinda? It's hit or miss. Kenshi lacks a personality beyond being too nice while many of the girls can easily be pigeon holed into harem types, it's only real saving grace is the universe of Geminar beyond the huge spaceship is much more interesting but rarely gets explored.
A dub exists, I've not seen it but harem dubs rarely produce decent dubs anyway without hearing some very stock voices from the female cast.
Final Verdict: War on Geminar struggles with the Tenchi formula it inherited through being part of the same franchise. The characters are bland, the world outside the ship is way more interesting and the episodes are way too long to stay focussed on.
I'm just going to keep reviewing, got nothing better to do just trying to stay sane through all this virus nonsense.
Hideki is a college student trying to work his way into University, he dreams of owning a Persocom, an android that has the functions of a PC invented by the same person behind the angels of Angelic Layer, but luck is on his side when he discovers a unique persocom named Chi just lying in the trash who comes with a rather unique system. With his friends baffled by Chi's OS an expert points out that she may be a Chobits, a legendary series of persocoms that have free will. With this new information and Chi seemingly learning as she goes along, the line between human and technology becomes ever more blurred.
This started off cute and remained that way for a while, I dare say that it suits the anime really well but then Clamp went all Clamp on us. Granted this is better written than many of Clamp's sorry attempts at narrative but I was more than satisfied with the early content, it didn't even need to be that much more complex, in fact if it were a web short series I'd be happier for it.
Dub is passable if only for Chi and Sumomo everyone else is average.
Final Verdict: A cute story of an android learning to human muddled by Clamp's terrible narrative and convoluted multiverse, it should've stayed the same as the early episodes.
I like easy reviews at times.
The cafe Cat's Eye is run by the Kisugi sisters who have double lives as a group of notorious art thieves hoping to steal back art work once belonging to their father who was a wartime art dealer which they hope would one day find him. Each steal more elaborate than the other helped by the fact that Hitomi is dating the detective in charge of catching them, they pull off each heist in their trademark cat suits.
As far as groundbreaking, this is likely the first largely dominant female cast in anime not under the magical girl or young girl genre, it's aesthetics were ground breaking for it's time as there really wasn't much sex appeal outside of Fujiko Mine and maybe one or two Go Nagai titles. What sells it higher is that all three women are very capable and it's a blast seeing them pull off each heist, sadly it's formula also means that if you've seen one episode there isn't really going to be many more that are different but I say it holds up better than most, just a pity Toshio is a complete dumb ass for not putting two and two together and not realizing the cafe and the thieves having the same name as well as both having three women are one in the same.
The original was never dubbed but the women all exist within the City Hunter universe and have made appearances in a dubbed OVA of City Hunter which I've not seen but I do recognise some of the cast so I'm not hopeful.
Final Verdict: Fomulaic but a fun trip through one of the stronger 80s animes of the time that really deserves more attention.
Now for another OVA but this time not a bad one.
Dr Mud has captured monster hunter Makenka and makes him a cyborg but fails to brainwash him enough to keep him in check leaving Makenka to go off on his own trying to figure out how to return to his regular body.
Meanwhile yokai police officer Dolo is trying to persuade Mai to continue her Monster Hunter job but Mai doesn't want to but a chance encounter with her sister Hikari makes Dolo think he can recruit her instead. Later henchman of Dr Mud appear before Mai and Hikari but a misunderstanding leads to a big fight at the end which drags in Makenka.
This is really what an OVA should be doing, there's already a setting that requires very little exposition, there's enough there to want more with it's rich somewhat dated animation and it's actually funny. This anime was based off a video game localised as Kendo Rage in the west rather poorly marketed I might add so it never really grabbed anymore attention but it's OVA was a better attempt at marketing a game than Psychic Force, heck even superior games like Tekken and Street Fighter have had worst attempts at this. Makeruna Makendo is a neatly wrapped up package with it's most disappointing aspect being no more episodes. Dub is non existent but the Japanese dub has some surprisingly heavy hitters of the period.
Final Verdict: This is the first OVA since Cleopatra DC I've actually enjoyed. It's still very 90s but it works for it's time period very well.
