I was going to do another Mystery Meat post today, this one on "Kaitou Tenshi Twin Angel OVA", but I couldn't watch it through. It was terrible. Just dreadful. It was blatantly a ripoff of Sailor Moon, complete with a mysterious guy (with white roses) who showed up to save the Angels at critical moment.
And just to show how derivative it was, there was a cybernetic tank straight out of the Ghost in the Shell movie.
Once the first battle was over, they switched to what I think was a middle school where our two cuties are students, being chewed out by the headmaster -- but I'd had more than enough by that point. I got about five minutes into the first episode of two. There's only so much pain I'm willing to tolerate on your behalf.
I guess I hadn't realized just how much Sailor Moon was imitated.
UPDATE: By the way, it would seem I'm not alone in holding this opinion about the show. I am currently running 93 seeds, and this is one of just 3 for which I have uploaded 0 bytes. (The other two being Melty Lancer and an obscure soundtrack.)
Well, it wasn't bad. It wasn't great, but I'd put it considerably above average for a Gonzo show -- which is a case of damning it with faint praise.
The ending felt a little rushed, and a bit contrived, but it was satisfying, ultimately.
After the final critical battle, there's a brief "And life gets back to normal" segment, which includes this:
Another cornball group challenges Ryoko in K-Fight, and she's ready to go, and about to wipe them out.
And the committee is there to televise it, as always.
Surprisingly, the fan service was pretty mild. About 90% of it was Ryoko's panchira, but we're not talking full-screen zoom-into-your-face like with Strike Witches. It's about like those last two I just included, and nearly always it's very brief. No shower scenes, no nudity that I remember.
Some of the combat scenes are pretty badly animated, with lots of shortcuts, but several of them are surprisingly good, among the better ones that I've seen. No, they don't measure up to the fights in Jubei-chan, but nothing else does either. That's a pretty high standard. They're better than DBZ, for the most part, so it's pretty good.
The characters are pretty engaging, especially the two leading characters, Ryoko and Shizuma. I think that Shizuma changes more in the eyes of the audience over the course of the series than any other character, but the fan favorite is still going to be Ryoko, just because.
If I was going to rate this, I'd give it 2.5 stars and a thumbs up. It's not a waste of time. Well, most of it isn't a waste of time. A couple of the episodes were really tedious, and it's pretty crummy to have a recap episode in a series which is only 13 eps long.
It was fun, and I'm glad I watched it. I can imagine myself watching parts of it again.
UPDATE: In fact, I think I am going to watch it again, though with some skipping.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at October 12, 2009 03:44 PM (PiXy!)
2
I guess I'll have to take a look at them. I didn't get that far.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 12, 2009 05:34 PM (+rSRq)
3
High school romance harem comedy with a clueless guy. Here there be dragons. I kept reading the manga far beyond any reasonable point because the girls are so damn cute, even though the story is kind of goofy and I want to punch the male lead in the face. But recently the artist surprised me by building the characters of Satsuki (ponytail) and especially Nishino (blonde) into something quite interesting. And you guessed right, it's the same artist as Hatsukoi Ltd, Mizuki Kawashita.
Posted by: Toren at October 12, 2009 06:12 PM (9K6fX)
4
It looks like Hatsukoi Limited because it's by the same artist. (As previously noted.)
...the anime really over-compressed the story, too. It worked better in the manga; they tried to cram too much into a single season of anime and the results...well.
I do like the series, myself, even though it's not exactly high art.
Posted by: atomic_fungus at October 12, 2009 08:11 PM (z8tFa)
Today's Mystery Meat is "Melty Lancer". I downloaded it to get bonus points.
Turns out to be a science fiction series from Gonzo with lots of combat by six super-powerful women. They were some sort of special combat unit, or law enforcement unit, or something but the unit was disbanded a year previously. Now there's some sort of major threat.
A guy named Collins is pulled out of a cell in a high security prison by three political bigwigs who tell him they'll release him, if he takes command of a reunited Melty Lancer for one mission. Having nothing better to do, he accepts, but other than that he isn't really a factor in the first episode.
He's assigned an aide, a wimpy guy (you can tell because he's wearing glasses) who has been sent out to collect all the women who are scattered hell-and-gone around the galaxy. And he manages to do so early enough in the episode so that there's time for them to engage in a major battle.
I'm sure that the wimp has the same voice actor as Pyoro in Vandread, but it's not listed in that seiyuu's CV on ANN. It would help if I knew what the wimp's name was but I don't think they ever said.
Collins has the same voice as Samson in Banner of the Stars. I didn't really recognize any of the women's voices, though.
The art was mediocre and the animation pretty standard. Little or no fan service that I noticed. The voice acting was a bit over the top. Generally pretty forgettable and after one ep I am not really tempted to watch any more of it, even though there's a loli mahoutsukai and a loli catgirl in the group.
I guess there's a reason few people are seeding this one. Right now there are only two of us.
UPDATE: Today's series was going to be "Girl from Phantasia", but damn. I got five minutes into it and couldn't force myself to watch any more. The pain...
1Girl from Phantasia was the pilot for a TV series that never eventuated. Now you know why.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at October 11, 2009 11:28 PM (PiXy!)
2
Oh, brother, do I. Even just in those five minutes, I could tell that it was completely derivative. There wasn't anything original about it at all.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 12, 2009 03:24 AM (+rSRq)
3
I watched a couple of episodes of Melty Lancer back in 2001 or so. It was sort of amusing and I was open to continue. But it was before the strict no-GONZO policy.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at October 18, 2009 05:30 PM (/ppBw)
4
By the way, I'm 100% ok with derivative shows. The real fault line is in the show's quality, and not being derivative. For all that's said about RahXephon being a clone of EVA, I found it much better made and far more enjoyable.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at October 18, 2009 07:31 PM (/ppBw)
5
I tried watching RahXephon for more or less that reason. Found I lost all interest after two eps. I suspect this was because I was more in a TTGL, Nanoha mood, as far as my anime tastes went. Maybe I'll give it a try sometime.
Or maybe I'll just rewatch Nanoha.
Posted by: metaphysician at October 18, 2009 07:45 PM (M5Kik)
Today's Mystery Meat series is "Sumomomo momomo". It isn't quite a mystery, however; I downloaded it just a few days ago and have some idea what I'm getting. NSFW below the fold.
I was curious to see how the series ended. Also, eps 23 and 24 were stated to be DVD-only, so I was curious about them.
Koushi never does become a fighter, but it seems that he does fall in love with Momoko. Ep 23 was an onsen episode. Ep 24 was about some strange rich girl who kidnapped Koushi and took him to an island where she had a mansion with an army and lots of weapons around it. His friends come to rescue him.
Ep 22 was the real ending of the series, and Momoko ended up fighting some sort of big-bad, a really huge man that someone else called "Tenga" who had strong ki. Their last fight was like something out of DBZ, with Momoko tossing around her equivalent of kamehameha and blowing up at least one mountain with it. Plus she and the big-bad were both flying.
There was a hint that Koushi has some sort of terrible power inside him, but his mother did something when he was very young to seal that power so it would never come out. But it does come out, briefly, during Momo's battle though, but he doesn't seem to use it. Momo wins on her own.
Oh, the other strange thing is that in the last episode Koushi and Momo are living in an apartment together. I still saw nothing to make me have a great urge to watch the series as a whole, however.
I was watching it with the sound turned off, but during the battle I got curious, so I started listening too. And Momo's voice still was wrong. It was a terrible casting choice.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 09, 2009 07:06 PM (+rSRq)
4
This is one of the shows where the entire plot is in the opening credits. It is amusing, and worth a look, but I stopped about mid-way.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at October 09, 2009 08:33 PM (PiXy!)
1
I see some serious Mike Mignola influences in the art.
Posted by: Toren at October 07, 2009 08:14 PM (9K6fX)
2
I just watched the second episode. It was really good, too.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 07, 2009 08:15 PM (+rSRq)
3
Huh, you don't normally go for horror. Are you planning to watch/track down further episodes?
( what can I say, you've perked my curiousity )
Posted by: metaphysician at October 08, 2009 10:30 AM (M5Kik)
4
I haven't really decided. Shows like this make me twitchy at night, so I might not. But the way the second episode ended also left me really curious.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 08, 2009 11:52 AM (+rSRq)
5
I prefer the term "obligation buy." It sounds more manly to say "I have an obligation to fulfill!"
Saying "I'm buying this because I feel guilty" seems... I dunno, so liberal, somehow.
Posted by: ubu at October 08, 2009 03:19 PM (f8pAz)
I was looking in my archives and saw that I never explained why this series is called "Mystery Meat". So here goes: I downloaded a whole bunch of stuff from BakaBT and started seeding it. For a lot of it, when I just look at the title, I don't have the slightest idea why. I know the main reasons why I picked things: for potential bonus points, or because of fan service, or because they looked like they might be good.
The Mystery Meat series of posts consists of me going out to my now-rather-large archive of downloaded fansubs and picking one about which I can't remember a damned thing, and watching the first episode and blogging about it as I watch.
Today's Mystery Meat series was going to be "Uta Kata", except that within 30 seconds of beginning to watch it, I remembered all about it. So we're going to try Koihime Musou.
1
Coincidentally I watched part of the first episode of this last night. I think it is yet another anime adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. My take on it agrees with yours- not very good. I might finish watching the first episode sometime, but then again, I might not.
Posted by: tds at October 03, 2009 08:55 PM (zjX5u)
2
The coincidence of names was the most interesting thing for me: Kan'U Unchou? Long black hair? Polearm? Big boobs? Sounds familiar, don't it?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 03, 2009 09:13 PM (+rSRq)
3
I took a look at your seedlist. FtN? Genki Senki Leda? Where do you even find all that
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at October 03, 2009 09:51 PM (/ppBw)
Different ways. Some of the low-seed-count stuff I found by resorting the "browse" listing by seed count (you can do that) and then moving to the last page and reading forward.
Sometimes when I see a user listed in one of the TOP lists, I'll look at their seed list (or used-to-seed list) and occasionally I've spotted something in there I thought was interesting.
It also turns out that you can click on a keyword and it'll show you all the seeds which use that keyword. That's particularly handy for keywords like pantsu. (heh)
As to Leda, I honestly don't remember just how I stumbled on that one.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 03, 2009 10:13 PM (+rSRq)
5
What coincidence? They're both drawing from Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Koihime Musou is a gender-swapped retelling; Ikkitousen is a modern "reincarnation" story.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at October 03, 2009 11:00 PM (vGfoR)
6
I found a cast pic from the game with the character names cross-referenced from the original novel (Chinese-type names, so it matches the Dynasty Warriors games, not Ikkitousen). It's here. Be warned - terrifying cross-gender Diao Chan at the bottom.
Also, a chart showing various depictions of a few of the characters, including Ikkitousen and Koihime Musou. Much smaller chance of horrific eyeball burn with this one.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at October 03, 2009 11:08 PM (vGfoR)
7
I remember watching the first two episodes of this when it was airing. I think I made it to the eyecatch of the second before saying "this is too stupid, even for me."
Posted by: Wonderduck at October 04, 2009 12:18 AM (/O6qY)
Today's Mystery Meat show is "Netrunmon, the Movie". And it's entirely too silly to believe. More, including a couple of borderline NSFW frame grabs and a lot of spoilers, below the fold.
Posted by: dkallen99 at October 01, 2009 02:59 PM (1PFDl)
2
They're kind of mutant ducks. Or maybe bionic. Both of them have jet engines on the back end.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 01, 2009 03:31 PM (+rSRq)
3
I think part of my brain just died with that description. Strangely, when I got to Samurai Damashii Ken pic, it immediately "sounded" to me like Samurai "Damage" Ken.
Posted by: Jaked at October 01, 2009 04:08 PM (hNS0e)
Even as stupid as it was, I can't help but apply the refrigerator mind to it. If Chiyu came out of a screen to bring BB Runner and Ranna into the anime world, then where in hell did BB Runner and Ranna come from in the first place? (And return to at the end of the show?)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 01, 2009 04:25 PM (+rSRq)
5
Look, you know me and my "Ducks In Anime" feature, right?
Even I won't do anything with this, even knowing there's ducks around.
Posted by: Wonderduck at October 01, 2009 08:26 PM (/O6qY)
6
Slighty off the topic of ducks but on topic of bonus points -- are you having problems with bakabt? It's been inaccessible for the last two days for me.
Posted by: bkw at October 02, 2009 08:44 AM (34O+x)
7
It went down yesterday for several hours because of a snafu on paying the bill, and then came up again. As of this morning it's once again down.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at October 02, 2009 09:44 AM (+rSRq)
8
You emphatically do not recommend it, but your review somehow makes it sound kind of fun....
Posted by: Toren at October 02, 2009 05:19 PM (9K6fX)
Mystery Meat -- Samurai Girl Real Bout High School
Our second Mystery Meat series is Samurai Girl Real Bout High School. I'm pretty sure I got this because it sounded like a poor man's version of Ikki Tousen. And also because of one or more keywords.
Blow-by-blow, plus 32 frame grabs, below the fold. A few of the grabs are NSFW, but it isn't anything like as raunchy as the last one.
1
I'm going to keep watching this, so no spoilers please.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 25, 2009 05:38 PM (+rSRq)
2
I haven't actually seen it, so I can't spoil anything, but I've heard decent comments about it. It's somewhere on my "to-watch" list, which just keeps getting longer these days...
Posted by: BigD at September 25, 2009 07:43 PM (LjWr8)
3
I have the first DVD. If I remember, I didn't think it was bad, I just never bothered to find any more of it. I haven't watched it in years. I might dig out the DVD and give it another go.
Posted by: Arson55 at September 26, 2009 01:06 AM (3CbGH)
4"I hoped for a well-animated fight [against the whole amateur ninja club], but we aren't being shown most of it."
Eh, the Law of Conservation of Ninjutsu being what it is, that fight wouldn't have been worth much.
Posted by: Mikeski at September 26, 2009 09:41 AM (GbSQF)
5
According to experts (that is to say, Aroduc), J2 has the best fights. He actually blogged about it.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at September 26, 2009 10:19 AM (/ppBw)
I've heard that, but I haven't seen it and don't really want to. For one thing, the story concept is lame. The first Jubei-chan series ended in a way which should have precluded any sequels. But more important is that they changed seiyuus for Jubei-chan. And I liked the first one a hell of a lot.
But the fights in the first series are damned good, and that's what I use for my standards of "really well done battles". That last battle in this anime didn't measure up to that standard, but it was better than DBZ fights so it was still noteworthy.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 26, 2009 12:19 PM (+rSRq)