Korean MMORPG gets the animation it deserves.

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While we’re on the subject of GONZO shows, how does this show hold up? I saw the first couple of episodes of this sci-fi take on the Seven Samurai and recall quite liking it, but didn’t get around watching any more. It’s by Toshifumi Takizawa, whose work I’ve liked on the Studio DEEN episodes of Urusei Yatsura and the TV version of Dirty Pair, but then again a lot of great animators have found themselves undone by GONZO’s production peaks and troughs.

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The manga Gantz is terrible on a variety of levels (“mature” in the most juvenile ways possible, overly photo referenced, slow production), but I can’t help enjoying it’s gusto and the biggest weakness – the fact that Hiroya Oku is clearly just making shit up as he goes along – is also its biggest strength once it gets past the Buddhist Temple mission, introduces Shion Izumi and the wheels fall off any semblance of sanity in the story.

So of course we don’t get any of that in the anime, and instead GONZO make up their own ending. That’s not helped any by Ichiro Itano’s leaden direction, meaning what should have been one of the greatest action shows of the decade is a worthless mess.

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It is hard to think of a more shameless Frankenstein’s Monster of a TV show than Burst Angel. It feels like you are watching a show assembled by ticking things off a check list. Admittedly you probably should expect this from the creator of MD Geist, Koichi Ohata.

When I first watched episode one back in ’04 I wrote:

“Hi we’re GONZO and we’ve just made a technical demo attached to 15 minutes of the least original anime you’re likely to see”

Bakuretsu Tenshi is one of those shows were if you had never seen an anime show before in your life, you’d think it was great. If you are familiar with any of the popular shows of the last 10 years then there is really nothing new here. Some pretty-ish cel shaded 3D animation maybe, but that’s about it.

I also wrote that I thought GONZO could do better, and had high hopes for the next show I’ll write about. Talk about being wrong on two counts.

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JC Staff/GAINAX production that amusingly abbreviates to MOO. I know I’ve seen some of this, yet recall nothing. That says it all I think. Standard catalogue padding.

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It’s Bee Train & Koichi Mashimo once again peddling their rather plain take on the “girls with guns” genre. At this point I was done with Bee Train, making them the first Japanese animation production house whose work I’d go out of my way to avoid.

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I don’t know what this is. It got an English language release though from the company you forget existed – Illumitoon.

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Another show like Smash Hit that goes for the Adult-Who-Looks-Like-A-Child gimmick, though this isn’t as tawdry as m.o.e.’s output. A more likely origin for it being animated is that JC Staff were looking for similar material as Azumanga Daioh to adapt, and Tamami Momose’s high school comedy fits that bill.

It’s not terrible, and if you like Yoshiaki Iwasaki’s work on shows like Love Hina and Hayate the Combat Butler, then I think you’ll probably like this. Me? I was out after 4 episodes, as despite some fun performances from folks like Kappei Yamaguchi, it just wasn’t funny enough for my tastes.

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High concept manga – girl wishes so hard to be boy’s girlfriend she turns into his right hand – gets a merely OK anime.

Looking at my old livejournal there was clearly something about episode 5 that I didn’t like, as I stopped writing about it after episode 4. I think it was that they were shuffling stuff around from how the manga played out and they may have seemed a little too enamoured with the annoying little girl neighbour. Or everyone may have just seemed more annoying animated than they did on the page. Whatever it was I didn’t bother with it any further, nor with the eventual DVD release.

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One of those shows that I had no idea had existed until now. Studio Comet veteran Hiroshi Fukutomi directs, along with much of the same design staff as the early Studio Comet productions. However much of the actual production appears to be from Seoul Movie. Based on a gag manga from
Lun Lun Yamamoto about kid journalists and a sheep. Quite why it appears to take place in 1970s Europe is another question, but certainly it doesn’t really look like anything else.

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