Anime reviews

[readsalot]

Note: Cardcaptor Sakura, X, Magic Knight Rayearth, and Chobits are all based on manga by a group of writers who call themselves CLAMP. After watching CCS, I thought maybe I'd like CLAMP's other works, and that's why I tried the other three series. I've rented all of these (mostly from Greencine), though there's a boxed set of Cardcaptor Sakura coming out soon which I intend to buy.

Cardcaptor Sakura (whole series):

When I watched the first episode of this, I thought I'd never watch any more. I thought the main character was an idiot, and her best friend was irritating, and her magical mascot was the most annoying thing I'd ever seen in my life. Then I decided to watch one more episode, and got hooked. Cardcaptor Sakura is about magical power and learning to control it, but it's also about love and the importance of relationships in everyone's life (even a magician's).

Sakura Kinomoto is an ordinary ten-year-old when the series starts. She's a cheerleader who's good at gymnastics, and ok in academics; she gets into fights with her big brother Touya, who always refers to her as "monster"; and she has a crush on Touya's best friend, Yukito. She accidentally releases a set of magical cards from their box, and the cards' magical guardian, Cerberus (here pronounced as Keroberos, and usually abbreviated to Kero-chan) tells her that since she's the one who released the cards, that she'll have to learn magic and retrieve them all. When her best friend, Tomoyo, finds out about this, she's ecstatic--she can make costumes for Sakura to wear while she captures the cards, and film her adventures, too! (You might think Tomoyo's kind of obsessed with Sakura. You'd be right.)

One of the charms of this series is the large cast of secondary characters (Sakura's friends and family). We get to know almost as much about them as we do about Sakura. There's a point in the series where Sakura has to face a challenge, and is told that if she fails, everyone who's part of her life will forget about whatever it is that they love the most. She has a dream that night in which we see what that means, and I was surprised by how moved I was at a bunch of brief scenes of various characters being completely indifferent to their loved ones.

Note: Cardcaptor Sakura is only available with a Japanese soundtrack and English subtitles. This maybe because The WB produced an English version, called Cardcaptors, which involved a lot of recutting and modifying of the episodes, and maybe they're the only company with permission to produce a dubbed version. I've seen a lot of negative reviews of Cardcaptors, so be careful what you get when you rent this.

X (whole series):

This was a movie, and then a series. The movie doesn't make a lot of sense if you haven't already seen the series (or read the manga), and isn't really necessary if you have. I liked the series better, so that's what I'll be reviewing.

The Dragons of Earth and Heaven are preparing for a fight that will determine the world's future. A boy named Kamui must choose a side, and his choice will alter the fate of the world. Or will it? This is an odd series. There are a lot of flashbacks, and prophetic dreams that eventually come true, so the repetition can be annoying. I really like that sort of thing (oh, so she dreamed that, and then she told him that, and then it really came out like this, which is entirely consistent with what she dreamed, just not what you expected), but I know it's not for everyone. The Dragons are all people with different magical powers, though they all seem to share an ability to leap to the tops of buildings and tall trees and just stand there, watching things.

Overall, I liked this series, but them I'm into angst. If you're not, don't watch it. Really. Terrible things happen to almost everyone, and I mean really terrible things. It seems like having endured horrible emotional pain is a prerequisite for being a Dragon, or knowing a Dragon, or walking down the street anywhere in a 5-mile radius of a Dragon.

Magic Knight Rayearth (whole series):

This was a movie, and then a series. I thought that the movie started out interesting, and then degenerated into senselessness, so I'm reviewing the series.

Three middle-school girls are pulled into another world that they have to save by becoming Magic Knights. Yeah, that's about it. Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu are yoinked into Cephiro, where a mage gives them a few clues and sends them on their first quest; that gives them enough experience to go on and find the rest of the plot. (One of them notes the similarity to a video game--I thought that was cute.) This was a nice change from the ultra-angst of X, and restful, as most of the stories were in one or two-episode arcs, and things mostly work out well. There's a lot of repetition, because many of the lessons have to be learned by each girl individually. There's also a lot of places where the characters turn into chibi versions of themselves for humor; I found it cute, but I know it's not for everyone. The plot summary I gave above was for the first season; there's also a second season that's a lot darker and more despairing. Sometimes that was interesting, and sometimes it seemed like a gimmick for making the characters seem less shallow.

Overall, this was ok. I thought that the first episode of the second season set up a really interesting emotional situation that unfortunately was never really well-resolved.

Pretear (whole series):

Some of the allusions in this series make more sense when you've seen the full title, which is Pretear: A New Legend of Snow White. There are generally a lot of fairy-tale resonances,and it's a relief to know that they're all intentional. Himeno's mother died when she was very young. Now she's sixteen, and her father (an unsuccessful writer) has married an incredibly wealthy and successful businesswoman with two teen-age daughters. The stepmother doesn't really want to be wicked, but she can't help some of the conflicts that arise. Then, the Leafe Knights (seven cute guys of varying ages) find that Himeno is the Pretear who can help them save the world from the Princess of Disaster. And Himeno starts falling for the tall, dark, and handsome Knight Hayate...

Overall, I like this, but then I'm a sucker for cheesy romance plots. There's also a lot of humor (mostly around the father, stepmother, and stepsisters). Himeno's magical transformation scenes contain more nudity than I was expecting for a series presumably aimed at teens, so anyone watching this with a younger person should keep that in mind.

Flame of Recca (first four disks):

This one's still coming out in the US. From what I've heard, it's an 11-disk series. Disk 5 will be out in October.

Recca Hanabishi is a teenage boy who's obsessed with ninjas. He tries to fight like a ninja as much as possible, and has let it be known that, if anyone can beat him in a fight, he'll be their personal ninja. Then he's seriously wounded while rescuing cute Yanagishi Sakoshita, and she saves him using a magical healing power. After that, Recca announces that he will be Yanagishi's ninja; from then on, he addresses her only as "Princess", and is completely devoted to her. Awww. Episode two, and I was hooked. We soon learn that Recca has a mysterious past that's connected to actual ninjas, and he acquires allies, and a power over flames that he must learn to control, and of course a mysterious group of enemies connected to his mysterious past.

It's a pretty standard story, but I like the Ninja/Princess thing, and some of the revelations about the past were rather poignant. I'm going to keep watching this as new disks show up.

Chobits (whole series):

This starts out looking like a salacious story about a boy and his inhibitionless robot girlfriend. It ends up as a very sweet story about whether AIs are capable of love. Hideki is a country boy who moves to the big city so he can attend a prep school to try to get into college, after failing his entrance exams the first time. When he gets to the city, he discovers that almost everyone has a "Persocom": a computer encased in a cute robot body that can walk around and talk. (At first all of the Persocoms we see are female, but toward the end of the series I spotted a few males.) Hideki would love to have a Persocom, both for the usefulness of the computer part and because he'd like to have a cute girl around, but he doesn't have the money. Then, one night, he's walking home and finds a Persocom who's apparently been dumped in the trash. He figures out how to turn her on, and finds that she's pretty much a blank slate--she seems to have no software loaded, and mostly looks at him quizzically, saying, "chi?". She learns quickly, though, and pretty much imprints on him. The first couple of disks are about Hideki and Chi learning about life in the city and have most of the annoyingly salacious scenes. After that, we start getting more plot, learning more about the different people Hideki has met in the city and what's going on with their lives, and Chi reads a series of books that seem to be about a persocom looking for love.

I found this story to be fun to watch, and often quite touching. Be warned that a lot of the stuff about how computers work doesn't make sense. The animation is pretty, and the voice acting (in Japanese--I didn't watch it in English) is good--I was impressed at how much meaning Chi's voice actor was able to put into different ways of saying "chi". You can also learn a little Japanese by watching this, because Hideki has to teach Chi what to say in different situations, so, for example, she learns that when someone leaves the house in the morning, you say, "tadaima", and when they come home, you say, "okaeri nasai" and fling yourself into their arms. :)

Comments

[qem_chibati]

Theirs another version of Card Captors Sakura out thats known as the Canadian dub. Its a very different series from the American dub cardcaptors (it actually has all of the episodes in order) I don't know if you can get it in America, but thats the version we have in Australia and the version thats out and about in Britain. (I think, at least)

Its always HELL trying to discuss ccs online, because of the different versions. Most of the bad reviews I suspect are for the cut and paste version.

And yatta for X and Rayearth. ^_^;;

Sorry, Cardcaptors fanatic, from iyfic_challenge

[readsalot.livejournal.com]

No problem, I love meeting other CCS fans. I'd never heard of the Canadian dub, but I'm not surprised it exists, because it seems that most of the dubbing for "American" versions gets done in Canada. I just remember being startled when I first watched Cardcaptor Sakura and found that there wasn't an English voice track, but I don't mind reading subtitles. Also, I find that I usually like the Japanese voice actors better than the ones doing the English versions--very often the actors doing the English dub sound way too old for the characters.

[qem_chibati]

*nod* In genral I don't like listening to American dubbings, because, American voices when it comes to anime tend to seem very bland to me. + their are a few of the voice actors (or rather a particular voice actress) that I simply cannot stand her voice, and she tends to get used a lot. I swear its the same voice. >.<;;;

But I was introduced to the canadian dubb first and I fell in love with it, then the japanese version which I enjoyed. Never seen the American version, but it has confused the hell out me, because their were people bitching about Syodaran (sic) turning up in the first episode and I was like: Wait... No he didn't....

And yeah lot of dubbing does get done in Canada, Inuyasha is one of the series thats dubbed in Canada I believe.

[readsalot.livejournal.com]

If you want to check exactly which voice actors are in what show, animenewsnetwork.com has a section they call their Anime Encyclopedia. It lists who plays what part for, well, every show I've ever tried to look up. The page for Cardcaptor Sakura is http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=126 (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=126), and it lists cast members for Japanese, English, French, German, Spanish, and more.