Plot: The Zeta project was a top-secret government program in which an android named Zeta was created as an assassin to take out suspected terrorists. When Zeta realizes that some of the people he was killing were innocent, he vows to be non-violent. However, the NSA believes terrorists have reprogrammed Zeta to be on their side, and they pursue Zeta relentlessly to keep him out of enemy hands.
As Zeta rushes around to prove his innocence, he meets a young homeless orphan girl named Ro who helps him out after Zeta rescues her from a gang attack. Together, they seek to find Zeta’s original programmers to prove his innocence once and for all.
Breakdown: The Zeta Project was definitely a show I remember from when I was a kid. However, I don’t think I ever watched it. I remember promos for it, I remember what Zeta looked like, and I remembered the name, but I’m almost certain I had never watched it back then.
It’s a shame, too, because this show show seems really great so far. The plot and tone all sound a bit too serious for a kid’s show, especially since we’re dealing with the actual United States government and the NSA, just in the far future. Flying cars and lasers and whatnot. Make no mistake, however. This series, at its core, really isn’t that much more serious than any other animated superhero show running at the time. Definitely more grounded and serious to a degree, but not so much that you’d be left wondering why this is even a kids’ show.
Zeta is immediately likable. He has my robot bias locked in, but he’s genuinely sweet and kind. Ro is also a really cool…..kid? I have no idea how old Ro is. She’s at least old enough to drive. Her situation is sadly all too realistic. She’s an orphan who grew up in foster care and doesn’t remember her family at all. As a result, she falls in with a gang, but manages to escape from them when Zeta shows up.
I really love Ro’s attitude. While she’s a bit on the selfish side sometimes, she’s a good person and always seems to do the right thing. She’s also pretty funny sometimes, and she has a lot of style to her.
I’m incredibly interested in the story so far, which actually makes me want to hesitate with this series. It was canceled after only two seasons, and it never managed to finish the story at all. I’m basically on a one-way ticket to unsatisfied feelings…..
Why was The Zeta Project canceled? Especially considering it was doing quite well and was even nominated for an Emmy?
Two reasons.
First, this series premiered in January 2001. Just nine months before the events of 9/11. You know what kind of show networks didn’t typically want to touch after 9/11? Any show that depicts the government and especially the NSA in a negative or scary light while also talking about terrorists a lot.
While this was a hurdle, the series creator, Bob Goodman, was able to convince those at Kids WB! to continue with the series with the condition that the talk of terrorists be reduced to little to none.
Despite basically winning this fight, the second reason came over the horizon – Kids WB! became more controlling over the direction the show would be going in the future, which stifled Goodman’s creative vision. He left the show as they were in talks for season three, and interest in the series waned heavily once he was gone, so the show never got a season three.
Over the years, there have been rumors and hints that the series would continue on in some capacity from a rebooted live-action TV series to a comic book continuation to a DVD special, but none of them have ever come to pass. As far as I know, it’s been quiet on the Zeta front for many years. While you can never count out any series possibly being revived in today’s reboot/revival/sudden continuation world, I’m not really holding my breath for The Zeta Project news anytime soon. It’d be really cool if it happened, but it’s a longshot.
I do look forward to watching the rest of the series, and I’m fully prepared to take the bittersweet hit of being left without a proper resolution when I reach the end of the this road, but I wish it was a hit I didn’t need to take.
Verdict:
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Plot: When Angelo Lagusa was a child, he witnessed his father, mother and little brother get viciously mowed down by members of the Vanetti family. He managed to escape, and went on the run for over seven years.
He resurfaced in the city of Lawless under the name Avilio Bruno, seeking revenge against the Vanetti family for what they did. Deep in the prohibition era, Angelo recruits his old friend, Corteo, into selling bootleg booze to the Vanetti family in order to get closer to the Don’s son, Nero.
Breakdown:
NOTE: This is another series I finished a while ago but realized I never posted the Episode One-Derland of it, so I’m posting it now. Full review coming down the line. Thank you!
This series reminds me a lot of Baccano! If it were a much more serious and didn’t jump around in time lines all the time. It’s hard to find anime that explores this particular time period and does it in a way that both sends up to its predecessors and makes a name for itself in the genre, but I think 91 Days has a great running start.
As a first episode, it hits all of the right marks. While wishing vengeance for fallen family members is nothing new, the setup is solid, and it is a good introduction to all of the important characters so far.
Angelo, now named Bruno, started out as a gutsy yet nonchalant kid who clearly loved his friends and family. The instant his family is killed, you can see the drastic shift in his behavior. They don’t immediately go down the road of him swearing vengeance upon the Vanetti family or becoming a cold-blooded killer. Like any kid in his situation, he ran to the last safe place he felt he had, his friend Corteo’s house, and wept silently until he decided it was best for everyone if he went on the run.
When we see him as an adult, he’s become the silent, colder and more calculating person you’d expect to develop from that type of trauma. In one instance, he’s clearly somewhat snapped.
Corteo is a very responsible, smart and mature kid at first, needing to care for his sick mother while living off of whatever he can manage as well as some kindly offerings from Angelo’s parents. After he heard of what happened to Angelo’s family and saw the impact that it had on Angelo, we got a glimpse into his character growth. Before the Vanetti family came, Angelo, Corteo and Angelo’s brother, Luce, were discussing a candle. Corteo explained that it’s the paraffin from the candle wax, not the wick, that burns, so putting out a candle with your fingers wouldn’t hurt.
Angelo told him to demonstrate, but Corteo was too scared to do it. Angelo, however, did it without a thought. At the end of the first segment, Corteo puts out a candle with his fingers without hesitation.
As an adult, Corteo is still very responsible, smart and resourceful. His mother has since passed away, and he’s bootlegging booze to get enough money to send himself to school. Despite pressure from the Orcos, a rival mafia family to the Vanettis, pressuring him to sell booze for them, he refuses, but agrees to do it for Angelo when he pops back up.
Finally, we have Nero Vanetti, who is both cold-blooded as hell and very smart. We don’t get too much insight into him as of now, but he is obviously a very strong and prominent adversary for Angelo.
The art and animation are beautiful. While the character models can sometimes be a little ugly, mostly at medium to far distances, the backgrounds and settings are gorgeous and really hook you into the era. The animation is also very fluid, and includes some beautiful angles, colors and lighting.
The music is great and loaded with that old-time 1920’s sexiness. We don’t get enough alto sax nowadays.
Verdict:
Recommended Audience: No sex or nudity (yet?) but there is blood, murder and violence. I’m going to give this a 13+ but I bet anything this gets higher over time.
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Plot: Four amnesiac twenty-somethings with psychic powers are recruited to protect the world from fellow psychic beings called Rifters. The Rifters originate from the mysterious dream-like realm called the Delta State, and their main intent is to control the minds of everyone in the world. The four have no choice but to accept this dangerous task as it is their best chance at remembering their pasts.
Breakdown: This is one of those shows where I find myself struggling to discuss it properly.
Let’s start with the basics. Delta State is a show based on a (never released) comic book of the same name by Douglas Gayeton. It was produced by Nelvana and released by Teletoons on Canadian television in 2004, and it has the honor of being the first ever fully rotoscoped animated TV series.
The art style really makes it stand out from other animated TV shows I’ve covered. I’ve seen numerous fully rotoscoped animated movies and short films, but they typically do this to gain a more realistic appearance while also taking advantage of the creative benefits that come with animation.
Rotoscoping itself is largely viewed as a lazy form of animating since you’re literally taking frames of live action footage and tracing over them, but I do believe this form of animation was the right way to go for this specific series.
Delta State has a very….college-esque kind of vibe to it. That makes sense considering that the characters are all in their early twenties, live together and basically act like college students. Not to mention the fact that doing a Google search on this title results in mostly colleges.
The show also doesn’t have tons of background music and utilizes natural idle conversations quite well. It doesn’t feel like a show where the fate of the world rests on the shoulders of the four main characters, but by the end you start feeling the stakes.
The reason rotoscoping works well for Delta State is because of the Delta State. Technically, all of their psychic powers could be done in live-action just fine. Claire has the power of remote viewing, which can easily be done with practical effects. Martin is a telepath, which is done even more easily since no effects are needed. Philip has the power of psychometry, which allows him to have visions of past events related to items, which can also be done fairly easily with editing. Finally, Luna has precognition, which can also be done easily with editing.
The Delta State, however, is meant to be a dream-like realm – and in dreams anything can happen. In addition, like lucid dreams, various aspects of the world can be controlled with enough focus and effort. In fact, the name Delta State comes from the stage of deep sleep where delta waves develop. The Delta State sequences obviously benefit from being animated because animation allows you the same creative freedom that are necessary for dreams.
Additionally, we can gain a better understanding of how surreal or off this realm is considering that everything else is rotoscoped realistically. It’s just a normal city with normal people. The main four don’t even look like anything special. Since it’s rotoscoped and not live-action, we’re not distracted by the contrast of the live action versus the animation. It could have been fully animated as well, but then we would have lost the more realistic feeling the show is going for.
This is truly one instance where I really think full rotoscoping was the absolute best option to present the exact experience that the creators were going for.
…….But that’s not to say it’s perfect.
While the rotoscoping job was done well enough, I don’t care much for the character designs. The facial features of the people are done in such a craggy manner. In a way, it does help it stand out even more, but it’s just flatout ugly, especially the ‘noses,’ I don’t know why the noses are almost always just triangles. It baffles me. Why are they just triangles? It’s so distracting.
For everything else, I’m not really bothered by the craggyness. It gives it more of a cartoon/comic book style, and I like that. But the faces are just really….no. Martin in particular has it bad because not only does his face suffer like everyone else’s but his hair is just an anomaly. I get that it’s supposed to be spiky white hair or frosted tips, but it comes off more like his hair is Elmer’s glue, they stuck it to a wall, pulled him off when it was half dry and left it like that.
There is a sense of emptiness to the city as well, which is strange. There just aren’t that many people around. It’s understandable, because rotoscoping that many people would be a pain in the ass and expensive, but it kinda loses the realistic feeling if we’re in the heart of downtown and there are barely a handful of people here and there. Most of the time it really feels like only the most necessary people even exist in the city.
Speaking of characters, it’s also a bit difficult to get a grasp on the main four at this point. Admittedly, this first episode is a part one, so maybe the second part will allow me to get a better idea of the true personalities of each character, but so far the only one I feel I have a decent idea about is Philip. He’s a pretty nice and laid back guy who loves books. He’s also an awkward but not fully shy dude that I could definitely see myself hanging out with.
Martin seems like the looser cannon of the two guys in the group. He’s also seen flirting with Luna and saying he has a connection to her, which may or may not be BS, I dunno.
Claire is a responsible person, but not all that proactive. When Luna runs off near the end, she doesn’t do much to stop her, and when Martin confronts her about why she didn’t do more to stop her she says she was waiting for him….which….huh?
Luna is the most emotional of the group. She doesn’t care for Martin invading her privacy by reading her mind, which is totally understandable, but she also, as I mentioned, runs away near the end because she can’t take the premonitions or the mission of the Delta State anymore. This is probably fine, but I feel like it’s way early in the show for someone to be running off because they can’t take the pressure anymore.
It’s like how I felt it was weird that the first episode of Teen Titans starts with Cyborg leaving the team because he’s fed up with Robin. Stuff like that needs to be built up.
Then there’s Bodie, who was only in this episode for a short while. Bodie is their handler/mentor figure. He knows about the Delta State, does…stuff related to it, and is the one who recruited them to begin with. He seems pretty okay for now. He’s somewhat mysterious and a bit rough around the edges, but he’s not setting off alarm bells for me yet.
In regards to the story, they’ve set things up pretty well so far. Them all having amnesia of their entire lives up until two months prior to the start of the series is pretty interesting, and them all having various psychic powers instead of the same set is cool. It makes all of the characters necessary in some way or another instead of having one or two characters who outshine the whole group. I especially like how they use their powers in creative ways to achieve their goals. For instance, Claire can sense/see things psychically, and in this episode she learns she can do that over the phone because she needs to covertly see inside of a bookstore.
The idea of the Delta State is fascinating. It’s a dream-like state clearly linked to their subconsciouses, but it’s also an entirely different realm that mirrors our own world while also not. They can see little clues to their pasts throughout the Delta State, but they’re typically too busy dealing with Rifters to really focus on these little flashes of memories.
Sadly, so far, the Rifters only seem like evil psychics so far, but, again, maybe that will be better fleshed out in part two.
In this episode, they’re tracking a Rifter named Karla who initially appears to Philip at the bookstore during a book signing. They’re alone in the store because the author suddenly left due to unknown circumstances and apparently the people who work in the store don’t exist and other customers never visit. They flirt for a while, but she decides to leave since she has prior engagements. When she gives her signed book to him as a gift, he’s able to psychically see events connected to the book – the most recent of which being the author of the book running away from the store after being touched by Karla, seemingly being spooked by her doing something to him psychically.
The group, sans Luna, go off into the Delta State to investigate. They’re caught by Karla and her cronies, however. Back in the real world, Brodie and Luna start experiencing, I’d call them, glitches in the fabric of reality because of disturbances in the Delta State. Luna decides to set aside her unease about their situation and head off after them. She’s somehow able to fight off Karla’s goons quite easily, but they’re confronted by the image from a vision Luna had earlier, which was of a car approaching her. What she didn’t initially see, however, was that the person driving the car was her in the past. This revelation is where the episode ends.
As a whole, this is a perfectly good introduction to the show, especially for a part one.
I’m disappointed that it seems like this show has been largely lost to time. It’s not streaming anywhere, there are barely any articles or discussion pieces about it – it’s just kinda drifting in a void. It is on DVD, but only the first ‘season’ (I say that because there’s only one season and 26 episodes. I guess they split up the first season and called it two seasons?) and barely anyone has bought it. As of right now, the first DVD set of it on Amazon has only nine reviews, though a bulk of them are very good. Also, the description barely has anything about the DVD set like…how many episodes it has, what other features are on it, what quality it’s in, etc.
I had to do a Google search just to find what the back cover of the DVD set looks like. It has 13 episodes, a ‘The Making of Delta State’ featurette, and electronic collectible cards.
Verdict:
Delta State seems like a very cool show to me so far. Maybe not masterpiece material, but I do strongly believe that I’ll have an enjoyable ride watching the rest of the series. From the sparse amount of people I’ve seen who have watched the entire show, it is indeed a good one with a strong finale, so I look forward to sharing more of this show in the future to hopefully draw more attention to this largely ignored, but interesting and well made, series.
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Plot: Growing up with the strongest superhero on earth, Omni-man, as a father, Mark always looked forward to the day he’d develop superpowers and follow his dad into the skies to fight crime. However, at age 17, he had yet to develop a single power. It seemed like Mark was destined for a life as a normal person, like his human mother, until he finally started displaying superhuman abilities. Under his father’s brutal yet caring tutelage, Mark finally suits up and gains his footing as the superhero Invincible.
Breakdown: As a big fan of superheroes and cartoons, I couldn’t ignore the hype train surrounding Invincible – especially after the finale aired and blew up Twitter with shocked and amazed reactions (I managed to avoid spoilers, though.) So, I grabbed a ticket for the aforementioned hype train, went down the tracks for a bit and….
Oh.
My.
God.
Holy.
Shit.
Okay, backing up, the first half-hour of the episode is rather by-the-books coming of age superhero story – even hitting the old beats of ‘gets beat up by bully before powers, badasses the bully post-powers’ and ‘really stupid-looking makeshift first costume.’ However, even if it is a tale as old as time, it was a really well-done version of this old song and dance. Tropes and cliches are fine if you can spin them well enough and make them memorable in your own style.
I love how they set such a grounded tone, how well-written and realistic the dialogue was and how brutal Omni-Man proved he could be, even though it’s obvious he was doing it out of love and concern. When he hit Mark for real, I audibly gasped because damn I felt that. But I didn’t hate him for doing that because, well, yeah, he’s going to have to learn how to take hits like that and to always keep his guard up if he wants to be a superhero. It comes with the job. Better he learn that with his dad than out in the field where he could legitimately get hurt.
Mark’s a bit on the bland side so far, but he’s not annoying or unlikable, which is a great thing because he so very easily could have gone that way. I was rooting for him in the end, especially when he finally donned his proper suit.
I was enjoying it all well and good, but I still had the lingering thought in my head….’Hey, when do we get to all that brutal stuff everyone was talking about?’
Then I got to the last ten minutes.
Wow.
That was one of the most shocking things I’ve seen in ages. It was like Ga Rei Zero’s first episode ending on steroids…and hulking out…..while going Super Saiyan. I really don’t want to say anything more to avoid spoilers, but I’m not kidding when I say my jaw was dropped for nearly all of the last ten minutes or so.
I was going to give this a strong ‘Yes’ before that point, but that ending just completely shattered the idea of thinking about saying ‘No.’ You can’t not continue after seeing that display.
Verdict:
I enjoyed this first outing immensely and I can’t wait to see the rest of the first season, especially if the finale is as shocking as everyone was saying it was. Probably not a suitable choice for people who don’t have a stomach for gore, and maybe not for people just not interested in the superhero genre (even though, honestly, I think even those people would find something to enjoy) but otherwise, this looks like a really incredible show.
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Plot: The future is uncertain – whether for good or bad. But one thing is certain – Mirai hates pretty much everything, by her own admission. She’s annoyed by school, her parents, her little brother, Yuuki, and believes nothing good ever happens. The world can fall apart for all she cares. But what happens when the world literally falls apart around her head when a massive 8.0 earthquakes destroys everything around her?
Breakdown: (Note: Cards on the table, this article is actually kinda old. I finished Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 quite a while ago now (Full review will come sometime down the line). Still wanted to post this, though, in case anyone was interested. Thanks for reading~)
Hmmm……..how is it possible that I don’t hate the main character? She is one of the grumpiest most temperamental teens I’ve seen in fiction in a long time. But at the same time, she shows a likable side, and it’s not like this behavior is abnormal. She’s a teenage girl who finds herself unhappy with life. And every time she tries to get invested in something, it gets ruined in some way, but in minor ways – ways that are minor inconveniences to most people, but, to a hair-trigger teen, would seem like they’ve just destroyed everything.
For instance, she wants to buy a cute ribbon for her mom for her birthday but someone else grabs it. Even when they try to give it back to her, she just pouts about it and has a fit after. She gets into driving a little robot thing, which I assume will be reincorporated later since it was specifically designed for recovery missions in disaster zones, but someone gets all irritated at how long she’s taking, so she pouts and walks off.
There was one time where I think she was just being stupid. Her mom buys cake FOR HER OWN BIRTHDAY because I guess everyone else just forgets. She doesn’t want any cake for herself since she’s on a diet, and her mom has to go to work too, so she leaves it to everyone else, but Mirai gets all pissy because…..the cake is in wedges and isn’t round.
She actually complains to her mom about that. And then later she mocks her mom behind her back about this “Who doesn’t know birthday cakes are round?” Like, how entitled are you when you’re complaining to your mom and your friends about the SHAPE of your MOM’S birthday cake that SHE BOUGHT HERSELF. Bear in mind, she only bought this cake for them, too, considering she wasn’t going to have any.
Her family as a whole is very realistic as well. Her father is a bit of an indifferent ass. He doesn’t really give any thought to Mirai telling him that it’s his wife’s birthday. He steps on a bunch of chips on the floor left out by either Yuuki or Mirai and he really doesn’t do anything about it besides complain a little. When their mom comes home and instantly starts warming up dinner, he starts to complain about how late it is and puts the blame of his whining on the kids who hadn’t even talked about dinner up until that point.
Their mom is pretty likable. She gives Mirai chores and responsibilities, actions which are, of course, viewed through the lens of a teenager as proof of her being a relentless slave driver, and she works a lot, but she obviously cares about her family a great deal. She never seems like she’s unreasonable to me, even if she does lose her temper once.
Finally, there’s Yuuki, who is just a sweetheart. He loves all of his family, is really polite, kind and generally happy. Even when Mirai is being a complete bitch to him, he still tries to keep his head up and even cheer her up.
Back to Mirai, she’s having a bit of an existential crisis in that she has an assignment over summer break about where she sees herself in ten years, and she really doesn’t know. She has no direction and no interests besides her cell phone, which is quite typical of a teenager. Just when all of her troubles start to bubble over, the earthquake starts.
The scene with the earthquake was extremely well done, but it came so late in the episode that we didn’t get the absolute full scope of the damage, which is a fine decision as I’m certain we’ll see plenty of it later.
As an intro episode, it does a great job establishing the characters and the main conflict for the entire series. I can imagine the beats the show will take, but I won’t be so presumptuous as to assume everything will be predictable.
The art is kinda simple, though I do think the way the smiles are drawn is adorable. And the animation is extremely fluid. It really looks great.
As for the music, it’s alright. I didn’t have a strong reaction to the opening theme, but I really enjoyed the ED, and the BGM was pretty good.
Final Verdict:
I’m really looking forward to the rest of this series. I’ve heard really good things about it, and it has a pretty unique premise, so I think I’m in for a good experience.
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Plot: Seventeen years ago, humanity discovered the existence of ajin; seemingly immortal beings with other superhuman abilities. Only two have been discovered so far, but interest in the ajin remains extremely high.
Kei Nagai, however, only wants to focus on being a ‘fine human.’ He wants to rid himself of frivolity and study hard to become a doctor. He’s even given up his old best friend, Kai, to achieve it.
Distracted while walking in the street, Kei is suddenly hit by a truck. Everyone watching instantly believes he’s dead. No one could survive a hit like that. Well….no one except…
Breakdown: Ajin: Demi-Human is a title I’ve heard of, but never really learned much about.
The show has a talent at capturing your attention. From the first scene, you’re sucked in by the ajin as one lone ajin takes out an army of people with ease, even taking RPG shots head-on without issue.
Then we shift to present day and our main protagonist, Kei, who is really hard to like or relate with. He has a very odd manner of speaking (Who says their main goal in life is to be a ‘fine human’?) doesn’t ever smile and is a big stick in the mud. Even when he’s a kid, he’s talks like a serial killer who’s too cynical for his age.
He has a flashback to his sister, Eriko, crying over a dead puppy and Kei basically shrugs it off and says “He was sick, so he died. It can’t be helped. Though, what’s the point of dying? Might as well not die.” He’s like six in this flashback, by the way. Not like his mom is much better. She called the puppy ‘defective’ and is the one who told Kei to dump Kai as a friend if he wants to be a ‘fine human.’
Kei gets a little better near the end because he actually sucks up his pride and contacts Kai for help, and he shows determination to not ever be caught by anyone, but he was trying my patience for a while.
Eriko is in the hospital for unknown reasons and seemingly hates him now. She’s unpleasant.
Kei’s ‘friends’ at school are two-faced jackasses.
The only one here who seems likable is Kai, who, despite being dumped as a friend, still goes out of his way and risks his life and future to help Kei in the end.
I don’t think I’m really spoiling anything to mention that Kei’s an ajin. He discovers this out of the blue when he gets hit by the truck. Now everyone and their brother are chasing him down.
I say this isn’t really a spoiler because the episode makes is really obvious that Kei’s an ajin even without him getting hurt or nearly killed. His focus on being a ‘fine human’, his inability to ignore news about ajin even when he flatout says he should ignore it because it has nothing to do with his studying, his suggestion that ajin are still humans despite their abilities, showing sympathy for them etc.
I’m a bit concerned that the show might lose tension with this. Immortal characters are, by default, typically boring because you’re never concerned for their welfare. Why would you? They can’t die.
So if you’re not really worried about their safety, you either have to worry about the safety of other characters, of which the only ones I’m really concerned over are Kai and maybe Eriko, or you have to make the immortal character more interesting.
As a first episode, it did introduce us to the world and characters fairly well, and it kept itself grounded enough to maintain a true sense of realism even with immortal beings as the forefront of the plot.
The art and animation are fully 3D CGI, and I have a real problem getting accustomed to that style. It works pretty well here. I don’t feel like I’m watching a half-hour long video game cutscene or anything, but I find myself being pulled out of immersion every so often when I notice the art and animation.
The music is really good so far, even if the background animations for the ED were really depressing. We just keep seeing silhouettes of people killing themselves in various ways.
Final Verdict:
While I am a little wary here as I’m concerned this will be an endless diatribe as to why humans suck, which wears on my psyche as episodes go on, I am looking forward to where this story will go.
(Status Update Pre-posting: Completed watching – will post the full anime review sometime soon.)
Recommended Audience: While there wasn’t a whole lot of graphic stuff in this episode, mostly just a couple of people getting shot and Kei getting hit by the truck, neither of which was very notable, THEM Anime Reviews warns that this should be NC-17 due to the intense amounts of gore they’ll presumably have later on, particularly when experimenting on the demi-humans. I can’t make that determination yet, so I’ll just say 16+
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Plot: A digital world is now layered on top of our own. All around us, there are cyber beings and items that can only be seen with the help of special glasses. Most everyone has a pair of these glasses, including the soft-spoken country girl Yuko, who recently moved to the big city. Her cyber dog, Densuke, disappears through a mysterious glitched out hole while chasing a strange black creature, and Yuko calls upon a local cyber investigative agency named Coil to find him.
One of their members is the extremely skilled Fumie, who agrees to take her case. However, they’re soon hunted by the floating Q-chans, which destroy cyber matter and sometimes attack people. Yuko is able to get Densuke back, but not before a gigantic Searchy approaches them.
Breakdown: I’ve always been intrigued by the concept of digital worlds. It’s an interest that probably sprang up with my Digimon obsession back in the day.
Especially now, when our world basically is meshed with a digital one in a lot of ways, the idea of basically turning the world into a giant Pokemon GO game only with no Pokemon and more fantastical elements, such as being able to ‘hold’ and ‘touch’ the beings and items is fascinating to me. I can’t imagine how much fun that would be.
That being said, while they do explain some facets of this world, they don’t explain enough for me to say this is a good proper introduction episode. I have no clue as to the rules of this world nor what most of the terms these characters were using even meant. I have no clue what the Q-chans are or what their purpose is because they just seem to be floating balls that shoot up anything they see. I don’t even know if they’re real things or cyber matter. Who’s sending them? Why are they patrolling the city?
I don’t know what the Searchy is or what it does at all. The main thing meant to be a secret is the mysterious black creature Densuke was following called an Illegal. It’s explained to us that Illegals are viruses that target cyber pets for some reason. Also, while we know this thing is causing cyber pets to vanish, they add that, whatever this illegal is doing to them is ‘bad’ but we never see or hear what this bad thing is.
This episode is a fairly good introduction to the characters, however. While Yuko is a little on the annoying side sometimes, she’s also fairly brave and clearly loves Densuke very much. Fumie is a very confident and tech-savvy girl who can be a little abrasive, but she’s not too bad. She does have a very gross ‘minion’ however. It’s basically a tiny naked old man mixed with a blob….
The art and animation are fairly simple but also decently stylized and fluid. Densuke’s design took some getting used to, but by the end I found him to be fairly adorable.
In the music department, we have some pretty memorable songs and some nice BG music, but nothing really hooking me in immensely so far.
Verdict:
While the first episode could answer a few more questions about the overall world they live in, this is a very intriguing concept and the episode as a whole does a great job at hooking you in and leaving you wanting more. In addition, I’ve heard some great things about this show, so I look forward to continuing it.
Edit 2/15/22: I have watched and reviewed the entire show now. This post will be updated with the link to the review when it is posted.
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Plot: Professor Utonium manages to stabilize the mysterious Chemical X with the help of his son, Ken. The new and more powerful compound is called Chemical Z. During an impending weather crisis, they use the chemical to clear up the skies, but accidentally create numerous beams of Z rays which hit Momoko, Miyako and Kaoru, turning them into the magical girls Hyper Blossom, Rolling Bubbles and Powered Buttercup. They also hit a nearby monkey, turning him into the villain Mojo Jojo.
Breakdown: Even though Japan doesn’t do it to us nearly as much as we do it to them, they have remade American cartoons into Japanese anime numerous times before. One of the more notable examples is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but there’s also Lilo and Stitch, Transformers and even properties like Supernatural, Batman and Iron Man have been turned into anime.
Out of all of the shows to get the anime treatment, you could definitely make the argument that Powerpuff Girls is the most obvious target. They already sport big anime-ish eyes, fighting giant monsters is their forte, and they’re basically magical girls without the lengthy transformation sequences and accessories.
So, it’s also not a surprise that Japan opted to fully turn the girls into magical girls with lengthy transformation sequences and accessories.
They also seem like they’re manipulating American audiences by slapping the ‘Z’ onto it because, wow, what’s one of the most popular anime in the west? Dragon Ball Z.
Back when this series first came out, I didn’t hear a lot about it. I heard some things, but it was mostly in the realm of ‘…..Why?’ Still, when it came to actual opinions, I didn’t hear much. I was a big fan of the original Powerpuff Girls, but I never had much of a desire to see what the anime version was like.
Fast forward over ten years later, and now I’ve finally decided to sit down and watch it as well as research the current reviews on it.
To say the ratings are all over the board would be an understatement.
IMDB is caught between extremely low ratings and extremely high ratings. And it’s not just hardcore fans who are in the low zone. Several people stated they hated the original series and found this series to be an insult to it.
MyAnimeList is better but also worse because their reviews are all over the place with some extremely low, some very high and some middleground, but it seems like the middleground ones disliked it more than their ratings would indicate, and one wouldn’t get off the comparisons to Sailor Moon.
I found a full-on hate post on Amino and even then they gave it a 4/10 before telling the reader to never watch it ever. Just….what?
There was one thing that was driving me to give this show a fair shot.
It has….
To be better….
Than this….
I mean, people are calling (D)PPGZ stupid, annoying and hollow, but PPG2016 is basically the epitome of stupid, annoying and hollow.
For sake of fairness, I’m not going to harp too much on the differences between the shows. I’m going to try and take it at face value as much as I can…..And then I’ll harp on the differences because I can’t not. But at least I’ll give you warning so you can skip it if you want.
Non-Comparison
This show is dumb and hollow. It’s not nearly as annoying as many reviewers made it out to be. It is a little, but not that bad. I’m mostly in the dumb and hollow camp.
I’m not expecting deep or intelligent stories from magical girl shows to begin with, but this is insulting my intelligence and suspending my disbelief way too much.
The episode is separated into two eleven minute long stories, like the original show. The first half is about the girls fighting Mojo Jojo after he kidnaps some kindergartners for the sake of stealing their candy to power his newest mech.
Why does this machine run on candy? Dunno.
Why is he kidnapping and taking candy from children instead of just robbing a candy store? Dunno.
The girls make an excuse to leave school, transform and fly to the location where they have a lame battle. The battle is particularly lame because Bubbles—excuse me, Miyako, has bubbles be her main attack, yet they are obviously no different from regular bubbles. We don’t have any way to know what the bubbles do when they actually work, so showing us that these inert bubbles are just acting like bubbles really makes it seem like they’re ordinary bubbles and Miyako’s an idiot for trying to fight with them.
Also, Butterc—I mean Kaoru keeps making baseball references when her weapon’s a hammer….
After a few minutes, the girls run low on power. Because god forbid the POWERpuff Girls have a decent enough supply of power to last longer than five minutes in a very mild battle. You’d think this would require them to charge up their powers somehow, but all it takes is randomly stopping the battle for a trip to the ice cream store to get them back to full strength.
They take down Mojo and the day is saved.
The second half is the origin story of the girls, which you’d think would be first but whatever. One day, Professor Utonium was trying to stabilize the mysterious Chemical X to no avail. His son, Ken, and robot dog, Poochi, accidentally knocked a pastry into the Chemical X vat and it stabilized it, turning it into Chemical Z, because screw Y.
Suddenly, and seemingly unrelated to this, the climate shifts drastically. New Townsville is thrown into a blizzard within seconds. Icebergs are forming in the bay and penguins are overrunning the city. This climate shift is not just happening here, but around the world.
In an effort to stop it, Ken uses Chemical Z in conjunction with a laser gun to shoot the sky and end the weather troubles. None of what I just said makes sense in the slightest.
And it starts making even less sense when three beams of light and numerous beams of….darkness? shoot from where Ken shot the sky.
The beams of light are all about to hit three small children, and the girls, Momoko (Blossom) Miyako (Bubbles) and Kaoru (Buttercup) all separately sacrifice themselves to save the kids because lazy writing. As a result, they get hit with the beams and instantly go through the transformation process. Speaking of which, they seem like they skipped the transformations in the dub because my copy is raw Japanese with an English track and the track goes back to Japanese for the transformation sequences.
It is a rather entertaining transformation sequence in regards to music, but the actions during the scene are kinda boring. They just kinda dance to pad out the time. Kaoru’s is the most interesting because she also does punches and stuff.
Also, they each get weapons based on the toys the kid they were saving was playing with at the time of the beam striking them. Momoko gets a yo-yo, Miyako gets a bubble wand and Kaoru gets a comically large hammer.
Momoko, or as her transformed state is called, Hyper Blossom, is the only one to get battle spotlight in this episode and gets further unnecessary spotlight later, including a bunch of still shots behind the Professor and Ken as they talk about all of the girls. All three of their screens eventual shift to just Momoko and 95% of the end theme showcases Momoko, because why not shove that goddamn ‘leader gets all the focus’ magical girl trope down our collective throats? That never gets old.
The beams of darkness are only shown hitting one being, a monkey named Mojo Jojo. He gains a helmet and giant cape as well as intelligence and the ability to talk and fly out of this deal. If I can’t question the magical girl items, I can’t question this either.
We actually get a kinda funny scene where Mojo and Momoko realize that Mojo’s evil, followed by another hollow and lame battle with Momoko flicking her yo-yo at him. She does eventually beat him and the day is saved. Miyako and Kaoru just go about their days elsewhere because we couldn’t be arsed to give them anything to do.
Also, Kaoru the tomboy is super upset about her outfit including a skirt. Seriously, she brings it up twice in the two times we see her after she gets her powers…
Before I get to the comparison stuff, this episode both succeeds and fails as a first episode. We see the girls in ‘action’, sure, get a…slight idea of the world they live in, but it’s a piss-poor introduction to nearly all of the characters outside of maybe the Mayor, Miss Bellum and Mojo.
We don’t even learn the names of the girls in this episode. I had to look both their actual and superhero names up on the Wiki. Ken, the Mayor, Bellum and the Professor just call them ‘The Girls’ all the time. They don’t have a single actual conversation in the entire episode, and we barely learn anything about them.
Not to mention that both stories are just kinda stupid. A mech that runs on candy? Mojo kidnaps kindergartners and puts them in a giant bird cage to get the candy? The girls stop what they’re doing to give the kids autographs? Mojo asks for an autograph?
The climate changes drastically all over the world in mere seconds, somehow spawns icebergs in seconds and somehow calls a flood of penguins to invade the city and somehow a laser created by a liquid Chemical Z shot into the sky in one city clears up all of the weather phenomenon over the world and it also gives good powers to three girls and evil powers to other beings?
Now onto the bread and butter of this review, the comparisons with the original. To be fair, I’ll mark whether or not the change actually matters to the quality of the show.
Comparison with the Original PPG
– The girls are teenagers now, not kindergartners.
– Matters? No.
You can age up the girls, fine, but it does cause some oddities like, they still keep in the line about saving the world before bed time. I’m sorry, what teenagers have a bed time? A curfew, yeah, but bed time? And if you do have a bed time as a teen, why would you advertise that?
– The girls are magical girls now, I guess, not mutant superheroes made from Sugar, Spice, Everything Nice and Chemical X.
– Matters? Not really.
As unique as the cartoon’s origin story was, this is a perfectly fine origin story for the girls, even if it is lazy and something that’s already been used (Tokyo Mew Mew vibes, anyone?) My problem is with the ridiculousness of Chemical Z.
Chemical X was a mysterious compound and no one knew what it really did, not even Professor Utonium. It made Mojo smart and was the key component to making the girls. But Chemical Z seems like it’s a deus ex machina in liquid form. It can be used as laser….fuel, it instantly clears up almost supernatural worldwide weather phenomenon, it grants girls magical girl powers, creates themed weapons, accessories and clothes for them and grants other beings evil bad guy power.
One could argue that making living beings out of some miscellaneous items and the chemical is just as bad, but that part of the story was based on the old saying that little girls are made of sugar, spice and everything nice. Just like when the Rowdyruff Boys were made, it was using the alternate saying for boys of snips, snails and puppy dog tails.
Also, the main origin behind the girls was that Townsville was a shady crap hole and Utonium wanted to create the perfect little girl to improve it. Thus creating the Powerpuff Girls….on accident, but nonetheless created them.
The fact that their creation wasn’t really…necessary and was entirely an accident is kinda boring. In fact, in a Static Shock Boom Baby kind of way, the girls wouldn’t be necessary at all if the Z rays didn’t also create bad guys…..
– Professor Utonium is no longer their adoptive father. Also, he has a son named Ken who is his lab assistant and a pet robot dog named Poochi who was also hit by the Z rays, somehow granting him the ability to talk even though I don’t know why this chemical…laser would be able to rewrite programming…He’s also granted the ability to call the girls.
– Matters? YES.
Ken is completely superfluous and so is Poochi. Removing Utonium as the girls’ father figure takes away a massive part of the story and nearly insults his original character development. Utonium was literally thrown into fatherhood upon creating the girls but did the best he could to love, raise, protect and teach them proper. Watch The Powerpuff Girls movie or several Utonium-centered episodes and you’ll feel a really strong familial connection.
Also, just because I can’t find anywhere else to mention this, Ken, you don’t say ‘Bottom’s up’ when handing someone food. The adage is for drinking. The bottom of the glass goes up when you take a drink. I don’t care if it’s in a glass, you don’t drink ice cream unless it’s melted. Bottom’s up would make a huge mess on the floor. /dumb rant
Utonium never even speaks with the girls this entire episode.
He is still a father, but dammit it all if he doesn’t act like it.
What makes things even worse is that Ken seems like he’s made out to be more competent than Utonium. The professor is meant to be an extremely smart and skilled scientist. So you robbed him of one major character element and downgraded the other. Wonderful.
– In addition to that, the girls aren’t even sisters anymore.
– Matters? YES.
Why would you destroy their familial dynamic even more by making them seemingly total strangers until they unite as superheroes? Even when they’re together, I don’t feel like they’re good friends.
– They’re also not called Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup. They’re called Momoko, Miyako and Kaoru.
– Matters? No.
The name thing is bothersome because I don’t understand the need, but it’s not vital to the plot. Plus, they do technically retain their names when transformed because they’re changed to Hyper Blossom, Rolling Bubbles and Powered Buttercup…..and yes, I do think those extra titles make these names stupid.
Particularly ‘Powered Buttercup’ Not only is that too on-the-nose, but what are you going to say ‘She’s the Powerpuff Girl Powered Buttercup’? That sounds redundant as hell.
– The girls keep their super hero identities a secret.
– Matters? Not really, but it adds a layer of common magical girl stupidity to the story.
Like many magical girl series, the girls keep their identities a secret, but don’t wear masks when they transform. Their appearances aren’t changed enough when they transform to warrant the belief that other people wouldn’t recognize them. I can’t say how much awkwardness or doofy plots this causes, but I can bet it’s quite a bit.
In the original, the girls are known heroes throughout the entire series. In fact, their kindergarten has a Powerpuff hotline right in their classroom. It removes the awkward and sometimes annoying element of trying to keep their identities and powers a secret while also adding a layer of complication in their lives that was more interesting to explore.
– Mojo Jojo still talks fast and stuffs his speech, in the dub anyway, but it comes off more like bad dubbing instead of a character quirk.
– Matters? Not really, but lessens the comedy of his character.
– The girls are almost pathetically weak in regards to stamina. Mojo’s already basically a parody of himself here, but the girls just swing around their weapons, sometimes hurting themselves more than they’re hurting Mojo, for a few minutes and they start running out of energy.
– Matters? Yes.
The original had such a good balance of action and comedy. If you want to focus more on the comedy, fine, but if the action’s so minute and lame, why even bother?
– The girls stop to eat ice cream to help regain energy (I guess?) while forgetting about and leaving a bunch of kindergartners in a cage…..
– Matters? Yes.
They seem like uncaring jackasses to do such a thing, not heroes.
– They have to be reminded to save someone who just got kidnapped…
– Matters? Yes, for the same reason I just gave. Heroes don’t do that….
– The girls have major personality changes. Momoko/Blossom is still the leader, but she’s no longer a serious, stern leader or a nerd. In fact, she implies that she pretends stuff ate her homework to get out of doing it. She’s boy-crazy, ditzy and basically unrecognizable from what she originally was.
Bubbles is still bubbly and positive, but she’s way into fashion and is ditzier than she was in the original.
Buttercup is a skateboard-riding baseball cap-wearing tomboy who detests wearing skirts.
– Matters? Yes, but mostly in regards to Blossom.
I can’t even gauge this enough because we barely get to see their personalities over the course of two half-episodes, but Blossom definitely fares the worst here.
While Bubbles’ being preoccupied with fashion makes me roll my eyes and Buttercup’s incessant irritation at wearing a skirt makes me…irritated (and, as tomboyish as Buttercup was originally, her main outfit was a dress…..) Blossom is basically gutted from a stern serious leader with high levels of intelligence to basically your typical ‘Homework? Ugh’ magical girl protagonist, maybe worse.
It’s also irksome that all three of the girls were either gawking at groups of others or had people gawking at them when we first meet them in their origin story. Blossom was drooling over the guys in the various sports teams running by, tons of boys were fawning over Bubbles and tons of girls were gawking at Buttercup. Yup, they’re all super cute and popular and amazing and blah.
– There’s barely a narrator anymore and barely an ‘and once again the day is saved’ segue.
– Matters? No.
As sad as it is to lose those transitions and endings because the narrator was practically a character himself, it doesn’t affect the quality. To its credit, they do try to squeeze some form of it in the middle and a small line by the narrator at the end, but it’s so unsatisfactory for fans that they might as well not even try.
Also, that line about bed time makes it worse.
Verdict:
It’s a lame and overly silly magical girl show with not enough comedy to back it up. There was one funny moment with Mojo, but that was it. The overall plot is dumb, the individual stories are dumb, the battles are lame and it just feels like a hollow show.
I’m not against adaptations changing things as long as the changes are for the better, but all of these changes are either superfluous or for the worse.
Fans of the show might enjoy it a bit just because it’s more PPG….technically, and it IS better than PPG2016. Then again, me setting my toes on fire is better than PPG2016.
Also, I will say that the soundtrack for the show is fantastic, especially during the transformation sequences, so if you’re a fan of anime OSTs, maybe check that out.
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Plot: Nitz, Cal, Rocko and Gimpy are four childhood friends who are heading off to college. They live up the college life in their own ways while pursuing girls, booze and parties.
Breakdown: I somehow remember seeing bits and pieces of this show when it was on the air. I don’t think I much cared for it, but I recognize the art style. Gimpy’s weird face especially stuck with me a bit. Didn’t realize until about halfway in, though.
That being said, this show is okay. It establishes all of the main characters rather well, which is impressive seeing as how we actually have about six main characters so far. It also sets up the story just fine.
It’s just kinda boring is all. I never was a fan of anything that takes place in college, because it’s always the same material. It’s more predictable than high school dramas. Beer, get laid, party, schoolwork’s in there somewhere, we all have a license to be stupid because college, ironically.
And, really, that’s all you get here too. We have the four college stereotypes; Nitz the straightman, Gimpy the geek (who never shuts the hell up about Star Wars because geeks are required, by law, to always talk about Star Wars or Star Trek) Rocko the blockheaded….jock? Partier? And Cal the rather oddly mannered super nice and handsome ladies man who doesn’t really act like a ladies man but does? Maybe Cal doesn’t count here.
Then there’s Jessie, the cool, down-to-earth gal who is obviously being set up as the love interest for Nitz (You can do so much better, girl), and Kimmy, his actual crush who seems like a nice enough girl just…excitable.
As the four guys are taking their own paths in college, four plots are created. Nitz realizes his high school crush, Kimmy, goes to his college and learns she’s going to a mixer later that night. He has absolutely nothing to talk about in regards to his first week of college, so he freaks out that she’ll be put off by that. Gimpy gives him a massive list of things college freshman do on their first week, and he sets out to do all of them including, somehow, buying textbooks and eating a meal in the cafeteria.
How did he get through his first week of college without buying textbooks or eating a meal in the cafeteria? The latter I can maybe excuse, but the former?
Also, it’s so dumb that he’s doing this in the first place. In any other situation, you can easily just respond to ‘What have you been doing during your first week of college?’ with ‘Just hanging out, getting settled in.’ Perfectly acceptable answer. But no, apparently it’s better to say he’s done stuff like going to an AA meeting. Yes, that’s one of the things on the list, because apparently college freshmen being alcoholics in their first week of school is common. He goes to a meeting and spends the entire time talking about wanting to impress his crush. Nice.
What’s even worse, this plot ends with him being a total dickhead. He talks about his crush problem with a bunch of different groups of people, all of whom take a deep interest in his plight. They all attend the rather sparsely attended mixer because Cal was sending invites while he was hanging out with Nitz as he went through the list.
They’re all being perfectly fine at the party and keep asking him about Kimmy, interested to see if he’ll get his dream girl. When it’s revealed that she’s not coming, he flips, tells off the people in the party who came to support him, insinuates that he doesn’t even like the friends he actually has, then storms off.
Then I guess we’re meant to sympathize with this jackass as he mopes for all of twenty seconds then reunites with his friends.
Rocko’s plot is trying to join a frat, but they don’t do hazing there. They’re perfectly willing to accept him, but Rocko wants to be hazed so he makes himself act like a complete tool all day. Rocko’s an obnoxious idiot.
Cal’s plot is very short as it’s mostly just him inviting people to the mixer and being mauled by women. He does have his own idiot moment, however, because, after following Nitz around and listening to him blather on about Kimmy, he stupidly forgets that Nitz wanted to talk to Kimmy. When she calls during the mixer, he tells her it’s okay if she doesn’t come because they have enough ladies. *huff*
Finally, Gimpy’s plot is trying to stop Rocko from joining a frat because he believes he won’t be friends with him anymore if he does. His was the most entertaining plot, but it was still pretty stupid. Also, as a Star Wars fan, shut the hell up about Star Wars. I know I already brought this up, but seriously, every other line of dialogue from his mouth was somehow a Star Wars reference.
Gimpy’s the only one attending a different school. Being the geek of the group, he attends a tech school but contacts the group frequently through video chat. Also, he and his entire group of geek friends all fit the freaky geek stereotypes to a tee. Gimpy himself looks like an electrocuted monkey.
This show did have its moments that earned a little smile out of me, but overall it was just really dull. The main characters range from unlikable to alright, the jokes range from ‘was that a joke?’ to smile-crack worthy, and I simply don’t have it in me to want to continue this series further.
I had heard fairly good things about this show, and I see the potential it has, but it never clicked with me back when I first caught it on TV and it didn’t click with me now. I can’t be the only one because the show got canceled 13 episodes in, failed to get picked back up when they gave the rights to Comedy Central and failed to do a continuation in other media such as a proposed comic or webtoon. However, to its credit, in October 2018 they did get Kickstarter funding for a movie, so we’ll see what comes of that.
The show has okay animation for an MTV/Teletoons show, and the art’s passable. The music is decent but forgettable with the theme song being performed by Good Charlotte. The voice acting is also okay. Everything is just….okay at best.
Verdict:
I might give another episode or two a passing watch, and maybe I’ll power through the other 12 episodes if they release the movie, but it’s a skip for now.
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Plot: Princess Star Butterfly is sent to earth to hone her skills with her newly acquired magic wand. She’s more than happy to use her wand to her heart’s content, but she causes a lot of problems due to her lack of experience with it. On earth, she is sent to live with the Diaz family and becomes friends with Marco, a widely known ‘safe kid’ who wants nothing more than to be seen as a risk-taking bad boy. Ludo, the villain of the story, finds out she’s living unprotected on earth and prepares to take her down. Together with Marco, Star utilizes her new powers to fight off the forces of evil.
Breakdown: Melding magical girl elements with good writing, funny comedy, fun action and instantly likable characters. I think I’m going to cry.
I have seen some of Star vs. The Forces of Evil in passing a few times, and I’ve definitely heard good things about it, but I’ve never started from scratch. The theme song snagged me in from the get go, and it’s just a fun ride all the way through after that.
I love the style of comedy. While it is loud and sometimes bordering on annoying, it never goes too far into irritating territory and hits the mark nearly every time. It has a great flow to it as well. Characters will just be talking or walking around and there will be jokes strewn about the scene – it’s great.
As a first episode, it does a great job at introducing the characters and making you connect with them instantly. From their very first lines, you know exactly the type of people Star, Marco and even Ludo are. Ludo kinda reminds me a bit of The Dark Lord Chuckles: The Silly Piggy from Dave the Barbarian, now that I think about it. Star is….a little too much in the energy department, but I think she’ll even out more as time goes on.
I absolutely love Marco, though. He’s not immediately made out to be an obvious love interest to Star (Though, there’s enough there for me to safely assume she at least becomes his crush later), and he’s not the reverse damsel in distress (A la Ron Stoppable) as he has fighting chops himself. It’s so refreshing to see these types of character pairings fight alongside each other for a change.
While we barely learn anything about Mewni, Star’s home dimension, outside of it being….another dimension….with magic, we do get a good grasp on the world they live in, the plot and their motives….after all, the show is called Star vs. the Forces of Evil.
I will say that the second episode (This show/episode is one of those ‘two episodes in one’ deals.) wasn’t as strong as the first mostly because it recycles a very overused plot. When you have a main character who has moved to the show’s location somewhat recently, you tend to get that ‘best friend from my old town and they turn out to be a dickweed, especially to the new best friend’ plot.
This time it’s with Flying Princess Pony Head. She is a flying princess pony head…..*cough* And she does not appreciate Marco even existing. What’s weird is that, unlike in a lot of other plots where the MC will accuse the new best friend of being jealous of the old, Star instantly believes Marco when he tells of how she’s been treating him, and she chooses to defend FPPH by just saying she’s rambunctious and possessive. Not sure if that’s better or worse.
Even though this is a VERY overused plot, they do enough with the writing to make it seem much less tired than it would otherwise. There are many funny moments, it ended one a sweet note and TIL you can apparently say ‘turd’ on Disney Channel.
The art and animation are growing on me very quickly. It’s very bright and active. In the stills, it looks great, but the actual animation took me a little getting used to. It has a problem with having the lines and colors of the bangs cover the eyes but still have the lines for the eyes come through. It’s not a major issue, but it’s a pet peeve of mine in animation. Otherwise, the art is very bright, stylish and appealing, and the animation is more fluid and real than a lot of ‘Flash’-ish shows of late.
The music is great, though maybe a bit too loud sometimes. That could be my headphones, but I don’t think so.
Verdict:
This is another show I’m very excited to continue. Here’s hoping it lives up to the hype all the way through.
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The Anime Madhouse 