The Bride of Deimos Review

Plot: Based on a manga of the same name, The Bride of Deimos is a one-shot OVA chronicling one story of the manga – the story of a brother and sister who grow beautiful and rare orchids out in the middle of nowhere. However, anyone who visits their house seems to vanish suspiciously. What is the secret of this orchid house?

Breakdown: This OVA feels like it’s one episode out of the middle of a longer show. Since it’s portraying one story from a semi-long manga, that makes sense. Because of this, however, you’re left feeling very confused.

The basic idea is that a woman named Minako has been chosen by the demon, Deimos, to be the new vessel for his dying lover. However, she has to agree to the process before the transfer can start, and she refuses to do so. This really doesn’t have any bearing on the story at hand, though.

The actual story is that her friend, Hisamatsu, is a bit of a flower enthusiast who brings her to a flower competition. He says it’s pointless to enter in these competitions because a woman simply named Tohko always wins and never shows up. In this particular contest, she has presented a Blue Lady Orchid, said to be nearly impossible to grow.

Enamored by her work, Hisamatsu goes off to speak with Tohko and is never heard from again. Minako goes off to Tohko’s house to investigate. Despite Tohko’s brother’s insistence that no one has been to the house in years, Minako spots Hisamatsu’s notebook on the ground and decides to get a police escort and come back later.

The rest of the episode unravels the mystery around Tohko and her brother, Kaname, as well as what happened to Hisamatsu.

I would say this is a mystery as a whole, but it’s really not. We know the instant we see Tohko and Kaname that they must’ve done something with Hisamatsu, most likely killed him. The only question is why and what’s the story behind these two? That is plenty to hold one episode out of a full fledged series, and even a short OVA, but the fact that it draws attention to the fact that there’s a main plot of which this story has nothing to do with makes it feel unsatisfying in the end.

Art and Animation: The art is reminiscent of Vampire Hunter D without so much pointiness. It’s okay, and the animation is fair.

Music: The music is dated, but okay.

Voice Acting: Japanese – Very good, but sometimes a little boring in their performances.

Bottom Line: I will admit that the story is creepy and very interesting, though there are some confusing aspects and plot holes, but the problem is that it feels like an episode you’d find in the middle of an anime. It gives off an episodic show feeling, doesn’t resolve anything in the main plot, introduces characters and plotlines like you’re already meant to know them and just seems unsatisfactory. I know this was probably meant as a promotional OVA for the manga or something, but why not start at the beginning instead of slapping us in the middle?

If you have intent to read the manga or already have, then this might be a good and short watch for you. However, if you don’t intend on reading the manga, prepare to be unsatisfied in regards to the main plot.

Additional Information and Notes: The Bride of Deimos was based on a manga written by Etsuko Ikeda and illustrated by Yuko Ashibe.

The OVA was animated by Madhouse and directed by Rintaro, who also directed Galaxy Express 999, The Dagger of Kamui, Reign: The Conqueror and Metropolis. There is currently no English dub available.

Runtime: 30 Minutes

Year: 1988

Recommended Audience: No nudity, no sex, no real gore, but several people are Robin Hooded to death. Scary imagery?…….10+

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Sailor Moon (DiC) Episode 3 (2 For the Dub) Sub/Dub Comparison

Coming up next, the sweet sultry sounds of your death and destruction followed by Taylor Swift’s new single.

Plot: Jadeite is behind a creepy late-night romantic love radio show, and its listeners are succumbing to symptoms of sleeping sickness. Can Sailor Moon figure out what’s going on before everyone’s lost in an eternal slumber?

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Title Change: Mysterious Sleeping Sickness: Protect the Girls in Love is changed to Talk Radio

Entire Series Edit: Before every episode, we have a brief preview of the episode we’re watching today. The original is left raw while the dub includes a 90’s-esque Sailor Moon border.

Subbed:

Dubbed:

The first conversation with Usagi’s mom and dad starts with her dad seeing something in the paper about a sleeping illness going around. Her dad says he wishes he’d get that so he could get some rest. Her mother scolds him for wishing that misfortune, and he responds by saying he was kidding. After all, if he was asleep, he’d miss out on her great cooking.

In the dub, he asks why she circled the date in red magic marker and she gets slightly angry before he says he knows it’s their anniversary.

During that same scene, as Usagi is waking up, they edit out Usagi running down the stairs.

The same gist is kept in the next scene, however, when Umino first appears, he says it’s unusual for Haruna-sensei to be late, not that thing about yellow earth worms.

Name Change: Motoki is changed to Andy.

In the original, Luna’s worried that Motoki heard her talking. Motoki recognizes Luna because they ‘met’ in the last episode. Luna relaxes since it doesn’t seem like Motoki heard her talking. Then he goes in to get some milk for her. Luna gets gushy eyes because he’s treating her so nicely and then stews that Usagi never treats her like that.

In the dub, Andy recognizes Luna for no given reason. One can assume that he might’ve heard of Luna from Serena since she goes to the arcade so often, but dub viewers would never know that. Luna says that Andy is the boy Serena likes so much. How? Why? She never mentions him, and dub viewers have never seen him before this episode. Andy then says he has to go instead of getting Luna a bowl of milk. Luna also doesn’t gush over Andy, leaving the sparkly eyes out of the dub, and then says it’s a good place to use a communications base since it’s so close to Serena’s school.

 

The next scene is also different. In the original, the possibility of a sleeping sickness is already established. In the dub, it’s like that theory is just as passing musing. Instead, the focus is on staying up too late to listen to the Love Line program on the radio.

After that, Usagi mentions that a sleeping sickness where you never wake up would be nice, which is why her friends freak out. She then explains that getting to stay in your dreams forever would be great.

Serena basically asks what the big deal is and there was no need to call the medics. Then Molly and Melvin freak out….for some reason. I guess maybe because that was a fairly insensitive remark since something could be very wrong with them. Then she says that at least school is canceled.

They cut out a few seconds at the start of the next scene. It’s just the guy setting down the letters.

Okay so this one took me a little bit to figure out. In the original, as Naru and Usagi walk down the street, they pass three guys around a car. In the dub, the shot zooms in really quickly on Molly and Serena, and I couldn’t figure out why until I paused the shot and realized the guy in the car has an unlit cigarette in his mouth. I figured the zoom was a work around to censoring the shot, but I managed to catch the first frame of the scene in the dub, and they did paint the cigarette away. I suppose the jarring zoom in was so they wouldn’t have to paint any other frames.

Subbed:

Dubbed:

Sorry for the wonky quality on Molly. It was a motion shot.

Zoomage:

Serena: “You’re a creep Darien!” ….I’m almost positive we haven’t established his name. Even in the original, we haven’t gotten his name yet.

They edit out Serena plopping her head down on the desk and giving up.

They edit out Serena blushing with a little thought bubble that has a little cartoon of herself dancing around.

In the original, Usagi transforms into a “pretty newscaster.” In the dub, Serena turns into a “sophisticated talent agent.” Wouldn’t a newscaster be more suited for entering a radio station?

So Jadeite isn’t deterred by Sailor Moon’s attacks, but he’s deterred by a random rose thrown at him from nowhere?

They edit out Usagi gushing over Tuxedo Mask with heart eyes.

An outside shot of the radio station is removed.

Coming up next, Usagi and her friends are obsessed with weight loss. Jadeite takes advantage of the insecurities of humans, especially younger girls, to use a gym as a front for stealing energy.

…Previous Episode

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Episode One-Derland: Zettai Bouei Leviathan

Plot: Evil insect-like beings known as the Lucasite have landed on the water planet of Aquafall and threaten to cause destruction to the planet. A fairy named Syrup wishes to collect powerful mages to form the Aquafall Defense. The girls she has selected for this task are the water mage, Leviathan, the fire mage, Bahamut and the earth mage, Jormungandr.

Breakdown: Still a sucker for magical girl anime, which this basically is, but this first episode isn’t much to write home about.

It succeeds in introducing us to the main leads fairly well, but not much else is explored properly.

Leviathan is seemingly the main main character of the three. She has a weird personality that I can’t quite peg. On one hand, she seems shy, yet on another she seems melancholy and blunt. On yet another, she’s quite emotional, and on the other she can be stone faced and tough. It’s like they roll a die to see which temperament she’ll have in the next scene.

As mentioned, she has power over water and she can turn into a sort of dragon-humanoid hybrid based on her element of water. She seems to actually be somewhat poor at water magic, but a flashback reveals that she used to be quite the water mage until her older brother vanished. Now she can only do water magic well when she’s particularly emotionally charged.

Bahamut is the youngest of the crew. She doesn’t seem to have much luck with her fire magic, and, unlike Leviathan, we get no real insight as to why this is, besides her age. She’s the daughter of a very well respected and powerful fire mage named Rage Row, and that’s all the background we have on her so far.

Despite her lack of luck in fire magic, she is more than willing to stand up for others. She’s a tad immature, overestimates herself and is pretty hardheaded, but she seems to mean well. Her voice can be very irritating, however, in spite of her VA’s, Eri Kitamura’s, impressive resume.

Jomungandr has the least amount of information given thusfar. She’s supposedly the earth based one of the group, but we never see her do anything with her magic. She is shown to be exceptionally strong, however, wielding a huge axe and tables like they’re paper. She is the tough one of the group who works as a delivery person for some guy named Travis. I can see her becoming my favorite character.

These three really started seeming familiar….and then it hit me.

They’re the Powerpuff girls.

That might be stretching it a little since Bahamut doesn’t seem to like being cutesy like Bubbles and Leviathan’s personality really needs to be solidified more before she can fully fit Blossom, but they fit the trio of archetypes, and you can’t convince me that Jormungandr isn’t Buttercup.

Conspiracies aside, our final main character of the group is Syrup, the fairy. Syrup is a little annoying, but not

…..annoying.

She doesn’t have much to her so far besides the fact that she has a big appetite, appreciates justice and I guess fighting, and that she always tells the truth, which seems to be a facet of fairies as a whole.

The villains are the main problem in their introduction. All we see of the Lucasites so far is a beetle-like bug the size of an iPad flying around smacking the girls in the face until it is fairly easily dispatched. Outside of a little explanation by Syrup, we get nothing else.

Instead, our main antagonists for this episode are a bunch of random thugs who were hitting on some random girl in the street. Both Bahamut and Syrup piss them off by defending the girl and Leviathan and Jormungandr get caught up in the fight and end up having a huge mostly off-screen battle with the thugs, resulting in the lot of them destroying some poor lady’s bar. The girls then lament that they didn’t get their food or tea and then laugh, end episode…..

The world that they live in is interesting to a degree. Some of the people seem based on dragons with scales and stuff and some just seem like humans with pointy ears. Some seem to be mages and others aren’t.

The names of the girls are based on beings from mythology. Leviathan is taken from that of a sea monster. Bahamut is taken from a giant fish (with no connection to fire outside of seemingly living in an abyss that includes fire). And Jormungandr is taken from a world-squeezing sea serpent. Seeing as how the girls all possess the ability to turn into dragon-humanoid creatures, these seem pretty fitting.

The art is just okay. The OP makes Leviathan’s transformed state look great, however. The colors pop and the lineart is decent enough. Nothing’s particularly detailed very much. The animation, done by Gonzo, is nothing fantastic but perfectly fine.

The opening has this cool fake language, possibly of Aquafall, layered over the credits before it dissolves into the actual Japanese credits, which I thought was cool. The BG music was pretty good. Seems a bit RPG-ish, actually. The OP and ED were fairly generic and forgettable though.

This isn’t a very good first episode as a whole. It did give us somewhat decent introductions to our main characters with plenty of room for exploration in the future, but nothing particularly big happened to hook in our attention. It was pretty boring.

The big baddies were nameless thugs who were obviously no match for even these three teenage girls and will probably never show up again, and we saw little in terms of magic. In addition, despite the set dressing, this is yet another story of invaders coming to a planet with a team of super beings needed to take them down.

My soft spot for magical girl shows is being manipulated a bit here. I hope it gets more interesting in the future.

Verdict:

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Eko to Issho (Manga) Review

Plot: Hiroshi believes he’s ready for his first cell phone, and finds the perfect one in an old beaten up cellphone that he finds on the street. He sends it off to be repaired, but there’s a mix up and he accidentally gets a teenage girl in the mail instead. But don’t worry, she’s still a cell phone.

Breakdown: Yes, manga is weird, thanks for asking.

You’d think with such a weird….and stupid premise that this manga would be crazy and you’d at least get some laughs out of the insanity and downright stupidity of it all, but no.

It relies almost entirely on the idea that it’s funny that a girl is a cell phone. She has an antenna! It’s funny because she’s a cell phone! She talks like ‘plugging her in’ is something sexual. It’s funny because she’s a cell phone and needs to literally be plugged in! She can choose various ring tones for Hiroshi’s friends and is bad at it. It’s funny because she’s a cell phone! Texting! It’s funny because she’s a cell phone! Are you catching on?

Eko to Issho does try its hand at random humor, slight fanservice humor and even tender moments, and, honestly, some of these moments do work a little. The problem is that almost all of those moments could’ve been achieved without Eko being a cell phone. If the main hook of your manga is the worst part and anything that kinda works doesn’t need it, you’re doing it wrong.

In terms of characters, Eko is a very naïve and airheaded girl who desperately wants to be a good cell phone for Hiroshi. Despite the fact that she doesn’t have a very unique personality, she was still fine to watch.

Hiroshi himself is really boring and quite the dork. Despite living in a time where cell phones are quite common, he barely knows a damn thing about them and is amazed at even the slightest things they can do. Not to mention that, when he saw that his cell phone was a cute teenage girl, he freaked out because he wanted his normal bland cell phone and wanted to send her back. Yeah, I’m sure that’s how a teenage boy would react in that situation.

‘Hot girl that is my age that I now technically own and also doubles as a cell phone with way more features than the crappy one I found in the street? Dammit, where’s the return label?’

Other than that, the only really notable character to me is the class president, Makoto Kawasumi. She’s very serious and responsible and has a major crush on Hiroshi for some reason. She’s fine, and you can connect to her fairly well.

Art: The art, drawn by the author, Maru Asakura, is ech. The regular art is cartoon-y, and shoujo-like, which is fine, but what the hell is up with the ears? Everyone has gigantic monkey ears that jut from their heads.

Here’s a character art page for you to get an idea.

It makes this passable art pretty ugly. I can only be thankful that several characters have hair that covers their ears, but the same can’t be said for our main character, who has ears so big and distracting that Dumbo’s probably giggling.

Bottom Line: It’s a stupid premise with stupid jokes based on the stupid premise. There are some moments that are nice, and the characters are fine, but the jokes just aren’t funny and the somewhat decent moments aren’t enough to keep me reading beyond chapter ten. I can be thankful that the chapters are very short at least with 11 pages being the norm, but I still can’t bring myself to continue.

Additional Information and Notes: Eko to Issho was written and drawn by Maru Asakura. It was published by Shounen Magazine.

Volumes: 4

Year: 2005-2006

Recommended Audience: There’s some mild fanservice and allusions to sex, but nothing that bad. 7+

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Five Centimeters Per Second Review

Plot: Takaki and Akari seemed to have no one else in the world but each other when they were children, and the affection that they had quickly developed into romance. However, Akari ends up moving away, and she and Takaki decide to have one more meeting before he too ends up moving so far away that visiting would be near impossible. Love is a strong bond that is hard to sever, and sometimes you can’t ever let go of it.

Breakdown: Five Centimeters Per Second is a movie that chronicles the life of Tohno Takaki throughout about 15 years of his life with focus being mostly on his lost childhood love, Akari.

This movie/three episode OVA has received much critical acclaim over the years, and it’s been touted as being one of the greatest anime movies ever. It certainly is a gorgeous movie, probably the best visual experience I’ve ever had with any animated feature, but let’s explore if it really lives up to its reputation story and character-wise.

Episode 1—The first episode focuses on a 13 year old Takaki. He became friends with a girl named Akari when they were young kids. They spent almost all of their time together and even got picked on for how close they were. The two slowly started falling in love with each other until the day came when Akari had to move away. Takaki and Akari exchanged letters, but it still saddened them both to be so far apart.

When Takaki got the news that he would be moving practically across the country, he decided to meet with Akari while he was still close enough to visit. After being stuck on a train ride for many hours due to weather related delays, he finally sees Akari waiting for him in the train station warming up by the fire. After a lengthy conversation, they kiss underneath a cherry tree. They take shelter in a nearby abandoned shack to sleep until the trains start running again.

Morning comes, and it’s time for them to say goodbye. Neither can bring themselves to say much beyond ‘goodbye’ and ‘take care of yourself.’ With promises to write each other, they finally depart.

This is my favorite of the three episodes. It’s bittersweet, but holds promise for the future.

Episode 2 — The second episode is about five years in the future when Takaki is 17 or 18 years old about to enter college. He has befriended a girl named Kanae who has fallen in love with him since the first time she saw him, but she could never tell him. Takaki always seemed off in his own world and was constantly seen emailing someone on his cellphone. He never noticed Kanae’s feelings in the slightest. It’s later revealed that he is constantly writing out emails to Akari, but never sends them for some reason.

It’s not exactly clear when they broke off contact with each other or why. It’s possible that contacting someone that you know you may never see again may be too painful when you’re in love, but that still seems a little cruel on both ends. You may never get together romantically, but you don’t value the friendship you had enough to be able to send a quick email, text or letter?

Kanae’s an avid surfer, but has lost her spark in surfing. She can’t find the right wave to get back up on her feet, and for some reason she hasn’t surfed for six months.

After she finally rides a wave again, she gives herself an ultimatum – either tell Takaki how she feels now or she’ll never tell him. After riding home from school together, she tries over and over to tell him, but she can’t. As she sees the new rocket launch into space, she decides not to tell him. She realizes that he was never really seeing her the way she saw him and left her love unrequited. He later moves back to Tokyo to go to college.

This is the saddest of the three episodes because, despite not really getting to know her much beyond she surfs and loves Takaki, I was kinda rooting for him to move on and for them to get together. It would’ve been bittersweet under the circumstances, but they could’ve made a nice couple. Plus, it would’ve been more realistic. Which brings us to emo-central, episode three.

Episode 3—The third and final episode of the movie shows Takaki at, guessing from the magazine article he read, age 27-28. He’s basically become a mopey workaholic who is still hungup on his old love of Akari. Speaking as a person who knows the feeling of being hungup on an old love, DUDE, GET OVER IT. Deep, true love is great. But you have wasted 15 years of your life being hungup on a girl you loved when you were 13. Think about her every now and then with nostalgia, but let it go, man. There’s a difference between being lovesick and being sick in the head.

To give him some credit, he does eventually start dating a girl named Lisa (?) from his work, but they break up for some reason, and it’s shown that, despite numerous attempts to contact him and saying she still loves him, Takaki shows that he never much cared for her at all. It seems like he’s not even putting effort into their relationship because of his love of Akari.

He crosses paths with Akari over the train tracks, but neither turn around until the train has blocked their view of each other. By the time the train leaves, Akari is gone. It’s later shown that Akari has gotten engaged and hasn’t much thought of Takaki until she dug up an old letter from him in her stuff as she was moving. It’s almost as if that’s healthy or something.

He comes to the realization that he’s become obsessed with his lost love (wow, took him 15 years to realize that. That’s actually sad.) and that he’s lost all of the passion in his life and personality as a result. He eventually quits his job and decides to move on with hopes that he’ll cross paths with her someday…despite the fact that she’ll be married then.

I appreciate the actual ending being a healthy and realistic development, but the final episode as a whole is just sad in the wrong way. Him still being hung up on Akari in the second episode is understandable. He was still a teenager and she was very important to him. But when you’re nearly 30 and still so distracted by a teenage love that your love life and life as a whole are a complete mess because of it, that’s when my sympathy starts to wear out and my worrying for his mental state begins.

Takaki’s also not very interesting as a main character. His one character trait is that he’s hungup on Akari to the point where it’s both legitimately sad and a bit….sad. Maybe I don’t have the most romantic heart in the world, but I still feel more uncomfortable vibes from the finale than I do any feeling of hope or resolution.

He as a character is very somber and boring. He doesn’t smile much, and when he does it’s in a very melancholy manner, even when he’s with Akari. I will admit that it was cool of him to not really be bothered by the terrible delays he suffered on the train ride and still retained hope that Akari was waiting for him. That was sweet.

Everyone else is perfectly fine as a character, and I really liked Kanae. I hope things ended up well for her.

Art and Animation: The art and animation are breathtaking. I’d watch this movie all the way through again just for the visuals. Especially the scenery. That scene where the rocket takes off is amazing. It’s like it cracks the sky in half.

Voice Acting: English – The voice work here is pretty good. No one really has to emote much except for Kanae and she does pretty good. Everyone else is pretty much just melancholy, but that’s on purpose.

Music: The music is great, and I really enjoyed the ending theme.

Bottom Line: The ending on its own can be simultaneously annoying and warm. However, I can’t emphasize enough that it is a beautiful movie with an artistic and philosophical atmosphere. It’s also extremely relaxing. If the premise of the ending doesn’t bother you, then feel free to bump this one up a point.

Additional Information and Notes: Five Centimeters Per Second was directed, produced and written by Makoto Shinkai, who has also directed Voices of a Distant Star, The Place Promised in Our Early Days and the video game Ef: A Fairy Tale of the Two.

It was animated by CoMix Wave Films, animators of the same films listed above and many other Shinkai features.

An English dub was licensed by the now defunct (though possibly returning?) ADV films, but is now licensed by Crunchyroll in the US.

It later spawned a novel version and a two-volume manga both of which were written by Makoto Shinkai with the manga being illustrated by Seike Yukiko.

Runtime: 63 Minutes

Year: 2007

Recommended Audience: There is no questionable material in this, but I doubt younger kids would enjoy it. It’s fairly philosophical and depressing. It also deals with subject matter I’m pretty sure younger audiences wouldn’t be able to relate to. For that sake, I’d give it a 13+

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Site Updates 5/2/2015

Doesn’t everyone look like this when they blog?

Hey everyone, Fiddletwix here giving a brief site update. I have added a few new pages to the site as well as a shiny new poll section off to the right. Here’s a quick breakdown of what these pages are;

AniManga Clash! – Throughout my time watching anime, I’ve noticed a very popular trend of complaining that anime is always inferior to the manga version, if one exists. This is far from a new trend as movies commonly get that from being adaptions of books, games and even TV series. However, is that really the truth? It’s been my overall experience that manga do indeed tend to be ‘better’ but what makes certain manga better than their anime counterparts? And most importantly, I’m on a search to see what series do their source material justice, or hell even do it better!

Episode One-Derland (Both anime and cartoons) – The way that I watch anime is rather sporadic. I will start watching a series, set it aside and not get a chance to talk about it full out for a while as I’ll have other shows ahead in my watch queue. Plus, some shows I drop very early on because of how terrible the first episode was. This series will hopefully allow me to share my initial feelings on a show without needing to review the entirety of it. Full reviews will likely come later down the road.

I am doing the same thing with cartoons, because I really just love animation, however, I will likely not get around to doing full reviews of them and instead update previous posts with my final thoughts.

Shounen/Shoujo Step-by-Step – Lots of shounen shows, especially fighting and gaming anime are particularly long and some are downright goofy on an episode by episode basis. Shows like One Piece and DBZ need to be broken down by arc for me to give my full thoughts while other shows like Bakugan and Battle B-daman deserve more of an episode by episode analysis in the same vein as my Pokemon episode reviews.

Shoujo shows sometimes last for long periods of time especially magical girl shows and romance dramas.

My criteria for this series is that it has to be particularly long (50+ episodes, though there is wiggle room and exceptions) and they have to give me at least something to poke fun at or something that I can more critically analyze.

Other than that, I hope to fix up my reviewing formats to make things a little cleaner in the future. On that note, my blog’s skin is a bit screwy when it comes to any posts that have pages. The page selections are at the very bottom of the post, a little out of sight, so if any review seems cut off, such as my Itsudatte, My Santa! Review, be sure to keep that in mind.

Here’s hoping you guys enjoy the new series, and thanks for reading!