Finding creators who have done a range of work that includes their best and least known works is harder than you might think so to give me more research time I decided to look into two mini ovas, the first one is Twinkle Heart.
God is after the legendary lost treasure of Heaven which he has tasked his two daughters along with their Guardian to search for, much to his own reluctance to do so.
The trio are as follows.
Cherry - A feisty red head with an Annie haircut and a short temper.
Berry - A dreamer who keeps forgetting to do her job.
Lemon - An easily distracted romantic who chases after boys.
Today's mission is on a mysterious planet of killer stuffed toys brought to life by the life essence created by the appropriately named Geppetto but it gets used for nefarious purposes so the girls have to stop a notorious bounty hunter from seizing the life essence.
It's simple dumb fun, it has potential but I'm less keen on some of the design choices along with the fact that the series seems to think that we know all these characters already which is fine in Japan, but not in the west on YouTube.
Also while we find out later that Winkies is basically Mcdonalds. Without any context to tell us, it just comes off as dirty innuendo.
Final Verdict: it's okay, it's at least watchable.
This month I'll be looking at creators before they were famous, seeing what they made in the past to put food on the table before they became famous for their creation. So try and figure out who was responsible for this.
Shinzo or Mushrambo in Japan tells the events of Journey to the West through a post apocalyptic setting as Yakumo the last human in existence must find the hidden sanctuary of Shinzo hoping to save the remnants of the human race, joining her is a band of Enterrans, genetically engineered beings made to survive the extinction of the event that killed off humanity, join Yakumo in her journey to Shinzo.
Our band of heroes is Mushra, Sago and Kutal who can fuse into the hero Mushrambo along with a group of kittens and Hakuba a robotic horse.
If you were to gauge the time period with all the kids anime like Digimon, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh, you'd forgive Foxkids for looking for a show that pretty much combines it all, yes even cards, but this show is a bigger mess for it.
It's easy to lose your marbles watching this as much of the cast feels pretty useless especially when Mushrambo gets summoned which is a shame as they are fairly interesting characters; as for Yakumo, her bad case of damsel in distress gets tiring after the first few episodes, I realize she's a target and supposedly she has fabulous secret powers but it's difficult to support a female character who can't do anything and constantly makes the same bad judgements.
The other issue is the story and how it ends as both differ dramatically between manga, anime and even translation meaning it's hard to conclude which one is superior.
Dub is passable for a FoxKids anime.
So who made this? Izumi Todo, the creator of the Precure franchise, the most popular magical girl series in Japan.
Although I find it ironic that her female characters went from useless damsel to magical girls who could fight saiyans given the chance.
Final Verdict: It's not terrible per say but the story easily derails the series and established characters in the grand scheme of things are actually pretty useless.
The last review tonight is Nora, an infamous title listed as one of the worst anime of all time.
This ova actually had another episode but finding that is near impossible so were just looking at episode 2 and trust me it says everything about this anime.
Nora is a bounty hunter working as an extra for the galaxy police and her latest job takes her to a mining colony where she's after a bounty on an Esper.
Nora has her own Esper powers to complete her missions and even uses them to help a young man find confidence again.
The production of this show is dire, there is barely any animation going on in scenes, so it looks like a giant flipbook, heck a flipbook is more fluid than what we got. Animation is expensive I get it but 1. You don't blow the budget on a soundtrack that pretty much is the only good thing about this crap. 2. Even if you had to work on a tight budget you made your lives so much harder with a huge dance number right in the middle of the episode with dance moves that would be hard to animate.
Sad thing is, Nora is one of the more likable anime heroines of yesteryear and this is not the way she should be treated in her only anime attempt.
Strange fact, interest only came back to this series recently when it appeared on search results for Twinkle Star Precure, so it's become a mini meme if only for a short time.
Final Verdict: it's production is dire but compared to others dubbed worst ever anime it's no where near the levels those shows are at, mostly because Nora is laughably harmless.
So here's the next one. My Dear Marie.
An engineering student named Hiroshi, deciding he's had enough of loneliness decides to make an android girl named Marie, except she's based on an actual girl named Marie the top tennis player in the college of whom Hiroshi has a crush on. Not wanting to arouse suspicion and because Android Marie has a mind of her own, Android Marie plays sister to Hiroshi. Naturally this causes hilarity which drags in a former childhood friend turned delinquent.
Ignoring episode 2 which is poorly written and keeps pulling crap from everywhere it's actually not that bad.
It avoids becoming one of "those" android girl series by actually staying grounded in reality by being closer to an Archie comics story, weird comparison but it's true, episode 3 is a nice touch with the dream sequences.
Dub is passable for an early ADV release.
Final Verdict: Episode 2 is a waste of time so just watch episode 1 and 3, overall it's a passable anime.
Get ready for an anime run like no other as I power through tons of short series starting with Carol.
Bad times are happening in London as sound is being stolen by an other worldly being. Fearing that this monster may destroy their fantasy world, a band of adventurers summon Carol to their world, although reluctant she later finds the courage to quote the incantations needed to destroy the monster.
I wasn't expecting much from this as it's obviously a hack job of trying to splice a multi episode story into an hour and Carol does that.
It features a decent soundtrack, and characters with some potential but let down by it's supposed villain making such confusing decisions over his alignment and the lead herself Carol being a spolit bitch trying too hard to act adult.
No dub but I imagine it would be crap.
Final Verdict: it had something to work with but many of it's more important elements are let down by shoddy character writing.
