Tokyo Majin
Aug. 24th, 2011 09:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
So, I just marathoned it, and figured I'd write a review for this week's bit of writing.
Whew, where to start? Where to start if I don't want to give off too many spoilers? I guess I'll cover the basics. (and yes, there will be spoilers. Not many I hope. I'll try to warn you before hand.)
The art was pretty run-of-the-mill shounen blather. Not great, not horrible. There were a few scenes that ended up looking really weird - I think they were aiming for a humorous tone, but the sudden downgrade in the art wasn't cute or comedic, just ugly. The digital animation wasn't as oppressively obvious as it is in a lot of similar shows, but still really obvious when they switched from drawing to digital. In the end - decent but not exceptional.
The character designs were pretty good... some of the secondary characters ended up looking really over the top weird. The main characters were designed to look as boringly normal as possible - with no injuries ever. No scars, nothing to remind us that they repeatedly throw themselves into insanely dangerous battles with demons. The bad guys were fun to look at. There were a few improbable hairdos and more than a little gravity-defying garments but you can excuse those as magic. Really - clothing doesn't work that way. As a seamstress I suppose I notice these things more than other people. Character designers should spend some time sewing and designing patterns.
I kinda want to meet the demonic seamstress who makes these fantastic outfits possible. Imagine a demon standing in his tightywhities talking to the demonic seamstress, saying, "And could you put spikes in it? Rows and rows of them? And the hakama must be both gaudy and tattered - with skulls!" The best villain dressing was the normal people who were given demonic powers. They looked reasonable.
Their school uniforms seem to be the off-the-shelf typical anime uniform designs, complete with mini-skirts that magically never show underwear and are worn no matter how cold the weather is. These uniforms never get damaged or bloody either. And, they wear the uniforms all the time, especially when demon-hunting. Because the ideal clothing to go demon hunting in the middle of the night in is your mini-skirt school uniform. Not like any adults would spot you in your uniform wandering the streets in the middle of the night and recognize which school you go to, and call it to let them know that their students are wandering the streets in the middle of the night. Have I repeated that enough yet? It's just stupid. Why is it such a common trope? I've seen real Japanese school girl uniforms. They're ugly, baggy, and shapeless. Real ones are designed to make everyone equally ugly, so that kids will focus on school instead of clothing. They're also supposed to cut down on teasing because no one can tell how wealthy or poor you are based on your clothes (which doesn't work, but that's the idea).
That rant aside... the music.
It was really nice. I loved the violin theme they had playing through the beginning of the story, and the more orchestral music really complemented the story, and made it much more dramatic. If a sound track comes out, I suggest getting it. I've always been a sucker for orchestral sound tracks, but the solo violinist managed to not sound kitschy. The best part of this violin theme is that it has something to do with the plot, but not how these themes normally are worked in. Not like in Blood+, where Diva's singing was pretty much the entire plot, but much more subtle, in a way that tugged at my heartstrings. The first victim of the demons that we meet is a highschool girl walking home, carrying her violin. We don't know her name, we just know that it's her that's playing the violin throughout. It's the theme used for the victims, and it's really really effective. It gives the hundreds of thousands of deaths weight and meaning.
The plot is nothing special. It's quite clichéd, and very predictable.
So, there's these three highschool boys who have been trained in marshal arts all their lives, and they are badasses. There's a girl who's a badass with a bow, and very butch. And finally there's a delicate flower, the rich girl with a heart of unwavering naivete. I seriously thought that the butch girl and the princess girl were a couple throughout most of the show, but that could have been wishful thinking. They all get super powers by stepping into the the same room, and weird black wavy lines suddenly appearing on their skin. Actually - it all happens when the princess girl steps into the room.
They fight demons and zombies for a while, until they find another human who was given demonic powers, they fight him, and from then on they're fighting other people with demonic powers, and trying to "save their souls".
Anyways, they're all reincarnations of people from some sort of ancient revolt where the revolting rich people get slaughtered. They, apparently, are the reincarnations of the people who did the slaughtering, and the reincarnation of one of the people they slaughtered is out for revenge using the Dark Arts (that's what it's called in the English dub, I didn't get to see the Japanese version) to give all of these people who were wronged in some way these super powers to get revenge.
Of course, the princess girl is some sort of uber-powerful magical being that can control life and death when awakened, and the main baddy wants to bring his entire family back from the dead. But he's being controlled by some one else! Oh Noes! Then Tokyo gets destroyed. Again.
Yeah, the plot's pretty typical shounen fodder.
What makes this series worth watching is the characterization. When I started watching it, I didn't have high hopes for it at all. It looked like mildly amusing background noise to work on my website to. The characters start out as tropes, but turn out to not be. At first glance, you have the easy-going guy, the delinquent, the jock, the class president girl, and the sheltered rich girl. Look a little deeper, and ...
The easy-going guy is over confident in his untouchablity because he's never seen real hardship. When he finally does meet hardship, he goes berserk.
The delinquent witnessed his parents being killed in front of him when he was a child, so took to the streets with a wooden katana, constantly getting into fights. He get's picked up by an old man dressed in Edo-period clothing and a katana, and becomes much much better at fighting, but still is punishing the world with sadistic beatings to all that commit any kind of wrong in his eyes for the pain visited upon him as a child.
The jock used to be a delinquent - son of a rich man. His mother commits suicide, so he takes to the streets, joining a street gang and creating mayhem to bring shame to his father, who continually covers up his son's misdeeds. Then one of the gang members, a boy who was abused all his life by his parents, kills his parents, and the later-jock realizes how stupid he's been, and reforms himself, diving into wrestling instead.
Class-president girl has, like easy-going guy, never faced hardship, and ever rarer - failure. She's smart, talented, popular, and athletic, and is used to everything coming easily to her. Then, when someone she knew commits suicide in front of her, her world collapses in on itself, and she struggles with PTSD.
The sheltered rich girl is naive. Very much so. But instead of viewing the horrors of the world and recoiling in disgust, fear and loathing, she tries to make it better. The others constantly try to exclude her from the fighting, believing that she'd get in the way, but soon discover that she's more powerful than any of them combined. Her healing powers soon start to show, and her ability to pull the demon-powered people out of their destructive mania proves to be an important part of the team. When she finds out that hundreds of people are dying just to force her powers to awaken, it sends her into a self destructive rage. She hurls herself off a cliff, which leads to her being captured by the bad guy, and his evil plans almost come to fruition.
I was really, really glad that the girls didn't get the short end of the stick in the characterization. So often they do in shounen anime. Most of the time, they're just there to be lusted over, to be saved, or to be the totally amazing supernatural beauties that have an inexplicable attraction to the incompetent male lead. Here, they're supernatural beauties - whose lives don't revolve around the boys' lives, but instead have an equal part in fighting to save Tokyo from the rampages of demons. They're equal players, with their own personalities. It's so refreshing to see female characters done well for a change.
I recommend this series. The boring, clichéd plot is made up for by the excellent characterization. The animation is watchable. The character designs are nothing new and no worse than everything else out there. The music is very good, and the use of the violin theme is very effective. There's a lot of violence and swearing in show, so don't show it to your grandmother. Or little kids. It appears to be aimed for teens 16 and up, but the rating is a good deal higher in the 'States. Like I said, lots of violence and swearing. No sexual violence though, and the gore isn't very graphic. I think it's fine for teenagers to watch, but leave that to the rules of your households, teens.
All in all, it's not something that you can't go without seeing, but it's pretty good. If I were to put some sort of arbitrary value on its worth as literature, I'd say it's 3 out of 5 stars. Just barely above average magical-shounen-saving-Tokyo fantasy.
Mata rainen, sayounara!
Whew, where to start? Where to start if I don't want to give off too many spoilers? I guess I'll cover the basics. (and yes, there will be spoilers. Not many I hope. I'll try to warn you before hand.)
The art was pretty run-of-the-mill shounen blather. Not great, not horrible. There were a few scenes that ended up looking really weird - I think they were aiming for a humorous tone, but the sudden downgrade in the art wasn't cute or comedic, just ugly. The digital animation wasn't as oppressively obvious as it is in a lot of similar shows, but still really obvious when they switched from drawing to digital. In the end - decent but not exceptional.
The character designs were pretty good... some of the secondary characters ended up looking really over the top weird. The main characters were designed to look as boringly normal as possible - with no injuries ever. No scars, nothing to remind us that they repeatedly throw themselves into insanely dangerous battles with demons. The bad guys were fun to look at. There were a few improbable hairdos and more than a little gravity-defying garments but you can excuse those as magic. Really - clothing doesn't work that way. As a seamstress I suppose I notice these things more than other people. Character designers should spend some time sewing and designing patterns.
I kinda want to meet the demonic seamstress who makes these fantastic outfits possible. Imagine a demon standing in his tightywhities talking to the demonic seamstress, saying, "And could you put spikes in it? Rows and rows of them? And the hakama must be both gaudy and tattered - with skulls!" The best villain dressing was the normal people who were given demonic powers. They looked reasonable.
Their school uniforms seem to be the off-the-shelf typical anime uniform designs, complete with mini-skirts that magically never show underwear and are worn no matter how cold the weather is. These uniforms never get damaged or bloody either. And, they wear the uniforms all the time, especially when demon-hunting. Because the ideal clothing to go demon hunting in the middle of the night in is your mini-skirt school uniform. Not like any adults would spot you in your uniform wandering the streets in the middle of the night and recognize which school you go to, and call it to let them know that their students are wandering the streets in the middle of the night. Have I repeated that enough yet? It's just stupid. Why is it such a common trope? I've seen real Japanese school girl uniforms. They're ugly, baggy, and shapeless. Real ones are designed to make everyone equally ugly, so that kids will focus on school instead of clothing. They're also supposed to cut down on teasing because no one can tell how wealthy or poor you are based on your clothes (which doesn't work, but that's the idea).
That rant aside... the music.
It was really nice. I loved the violin theme they had playing through the beginning of the story, and the more orchestral music really complemented the story, and made it much more dramatic. If a sound track comes out, I suggest getting it. I've always been a sucker for orchestral sound tracks, but the solo violinist managed to not sound kitschy. The best part of this violin theme is that it has something to do with the plot, but not how these themes normally are worked in. Not like in Blood+, where Diva's singing was pretty much the entire plot, but much more subtle, in a way that tugged at my heartstrings. The first victim of the demons that we meet is a highschool girl walking home, carrying her violin. We don't know her name, we just know that it's her that's playing the violin throughout. It's the theme used for the victims, and it's really really effective. It gives the hundreds of thousands of deaths weight and meaning.
The plot is nothing special. It's quite clichéd, and very predictable.
So, there's these three highschool boys who have been trained in marshal arts all their lives, and they are badasses. There's a girl who's a badass with a bow, and very butch. And finally there's a delicate flower, the rich girl with a heart of unwavering naivete. I seriously thought that the butch girl and the princess girl were a couple throughout most of the show, but that could have been wishful thinking. They all get super powers by stepping into the the same room, and weird black wavy lines suddenly appearing on their skin. Actually - it all happens when the princess girl steps into the room.
They fight demons and zombies for a while, until they find another human who was given demonic powers, they fight him, and from then on they're fighting other people with demonic powers, and trying to "save their souls".
Anyways, they're all reincarnations of people from some sort of ancient revolt where the revolting rich people get slaughtered. They, apparently, are the reincarnations of the people who did the slaughtering, and the reincarnation of one of the people they slaughtered is out for revenge using the Dark Arts (that's what it's called in the English dub, I didn't get to see the Japanese version) to give all of these people who were wronged in some way these super powers to get revenge.
Of course, the princess girl is some sort of uber-powerful magical being that can control life and death when awakened, and the main baddy wants to bring his entire family back from the dead. But he's being controlled by some one else! Oh Noes! Then Tokyo gets destroyed. Again.
Yeah, the plot's pretty typical shounen fodder.
What makes this series worth watching is the characterization. When I started watching it, I didn't have high hopes for it at all. It looked like mildly amusing background noise to work on my website to. The characters start out as tropes, but turn out to not be. At first glance, you have the easy-going guy, the delinquent, the jock, the class president girl, and the sheltered rich girl. Look a little deeper, and ...
The easy-going guy is over confident in his untouchablity because he's never seen real hardship. When he finally does meet hardship, he goes berserk.
The delinquent witnessed his parents being killed in front of him when he was a child, so took to the streets with a wooden katana, constantly getting into fights. He get's picked up by an old man dressed in Edo-period clothing and a katana, and becomes much much better at fighting, but still is punishing the world with sadistic beatings to all that commit any kind of wrong in his eyes for the pain visited upon him as a child.
The jock used to be a delinquent - son of a rich man. His mother commits suicide, so he takes to the streets, joining a street gang and creating mayhem to bring shame to his father, who continually covers up his son's misdeeds. Then one of the gang members, a boy who was abused all his life by his parents, kills his parents, and the later-jock realizes how stupid he's been, and reforms himself, diving into wrestling instead.
Class-president girl has, like easy-going guy, never faced hardship, and ever rarer - failure. She's smart, talented, popular, and athletic, and is used to everything coming easily to her. Then, when someone she knew commits suicide in front of her, her world collapses in on itself, and she struggles with PTSD.
The sheltered rich girl is naive. Very much so. But instead of viewing the horrors of the world and recoiling in disgust, fear and loathing, she tries to make it better. The others constantly try to exclude her from the fighting, believing that she'd get in the way, but soon discover that she's more powerful than any of them combined. Her healing powers soon start to show, and her ability to pull the demon-powered people out of their destructive mania proves to be an important part of the team. When she finds out that hundreds of people are dying just to force her powers to awaken, it sends her into a self destructive rage. She hurls herself off a cliff, which leads to her being captured by the bad guy, and his evil plans almost come to fruition.
I was really, really glad that the girls didn't get the short end of the stick in the characterization. So often they do in shounen anime. Most of the time, they're just there to be lusted over, to be saved, or to be the totally amazing supernatural beauties that have an inexplicable attraction to the incompetent male lead. Here, they're supernatural beauties - whose lives don't revolve around the boys' lives, but instead have an equal part in fighting to save Tokyo from the rampages of demons. They're equal players, with their own personalities. It's so refreshing to see female characters done well for a change.
I recommend this series. The boring, clichéd plot is made up for by the excellent characterization. The animation is watchable. The character designs are nothing new and no worse than everything else out there. The music is very good, and the use of the violin theme is very effective. There's a lot of violence and swearing in show, so don't show it to your grandmother. Or little kids. It appears to be aimed for teens 16 and up, but the rating is a good deal higher in the 'States. Like I said, lots of violence and swearing. No sexual violence though, and the gore isn't very graphic. I think it's fine for teenagers to watch, but leave that to the rules of your households, teens.
All in all, it's not something that you can't go without seeing, but it's pretty good. If I were to put some sort of arbitrary value on its worth as literature, I'd say it's 3 out of 5 stars. Just barely above average magical-shounen-saving-Tokyo fantasy.
Mata rainen, sayounara!