Monday, September 5, 2005

   Homework Sucks
Due to college (and my wonderful 18 credit hours), I have had very little time to do much watching of anime. In fact, the only new series I have seen...is S-Cry-d. So...

SCRYED
The premise: 20 years ago there was an unexplained upheaval in Japan that resulted in an island-like area that was thrust upward 300 meters and cut off from the rest of the world. It is known as the "lost ground". Now, people are being born with powers, called 'alter powers', that allow them to call up their alters, whatever they are (the alters are different for everyone). The Japanese governmenet stepped in and set up a city in the lost ground, and then set up a police force known as 'Hold', and inside Hold there is Holy, the alter-using faction of Hold. The entire plotline basically follows the fight between lost ground and mainland at different scales - between city and inner (the term for outside the city - beats me why that is), between Ryuhou and Kazuma (main characters - Ryuhou is in Holy, Kazuma's an inner), and of course, the fights between the actual mainland army and the inner alter-users.
My Opinion: Ick. Ok, maybe it was the dubbing. I am a person on the fence in the sub/dub debate, usually preferring whatever I started out with, but this dubbing was horrible. Ok, maybe that's a little harsh - it usually wasn't bad - but whenever Ryuhou and Kazuma saw each other or thought of each other, the dialogue seemed to go from ok to cheesy weird. Plus - synchronized lines? C'mon! They weren't done well.
Ok, other than the bad dialogue, there really wasn't anything to make any of the characters endearing - out of all of them, I liked Cougar best (why do the secondary characters alwasys get the cool outlooks on life?). I kinda wished Cherise would end up with Ryuhou, and I wished that Mimori would somewhere in the plotline fall for Kazuma, but no. Ok, sorry for the spoilers (spoiler spoiler you don't wanna know don't look!) but the whole love thing was wack in the series. Firt, Kanami's a little girl, yet Kazuma ends up with her?? And the childhood friend of Ryuhou, who hasn't seen him since they were little, gets to be with him even though the person who's been with him longer and more recently and knows him perhaps a little better dies. What a crappy end to the love triangle! Not to mention the whole ending of the series, with Ryuhou and Kazuma's fight - what was that about? It was a pointless episode. I would have rather the series ended an episode earlier than have to sit through that. (END OF SPOILERS SPOILERS DONE YOU CAN LOOK AGAIN!)
Animations were average - nothing special, actually a little underdone. This was done by the same people as Gundam Seed, so if you've seen that you can imagine what it's like, save minus the 3d scenes. It's actually a little below Gundam Seed.
Music was...average to a little below. I tried to listen to in-show songs, but I don't remember any of them, and the opening song's ok, but that's about it.
My Rating: 5
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