Tag Archives: Anti-Hero

The protagonist or a prominent character does whatever it takes for the greater good without allowing himself or herself to turn to the dark side. Batman, Sagara from Full Metal Panic, and yes, even Godzilla fit the anti-hero mould.

Anime Reviews, Horror, Mystery

Shiki – Anime Review

25 January 2015 Nefarious Reviews 6 Comments

Japanese Title: Shiki

Similar: Another

When They Cry

From the New World

Watched in: Japanese & English

Genre: Supernatural Vampire Mystery Horror

Length: 22 episodes & 2 side episodes (20.5, 21.5 – make sure to watch them.)

Positives:

A great sense of tension as people keep mysteriously dying in an isolated town.
Explores the dark side of humanity when given ultimate freedom or pushed to the edge.
Interesting, vibrant visuals mask the morbid scenario.
Broad range in the voice work.
The tinny, music box soundtrack grips the nerves.

Negatives:

The village priest, one of several main characters, is bland despite a significant amount of screen time.
Was the ending theme sung by a strangled parrot?

I’ll be honest. I had little faith in Shiki after reading the premise. I didn’t think that a vibrant anime with colourful hair could resist throwing in clichés like ‘onii-chan’ rubbish and breast grabs, ruining any chance of serious horror. I am glad to be proven wrong.

In a rural Japanese village, teenager Megumi dreams of the big city. She hates the country life full of old people gossiping all day and the lack of clothing stores. Only the European castle on the hill and the hot transfer student from the city, Natsuno, has any appeal in this dump. Megumi goes missing one day and is found collapsed in the forest, suffering from anaemia. She was last seen visiting the eccentric family that just moved into the castle in the hope of gaining their favour and luxurious lifestyle. She dies days later.

Free of Megumi’s stalker tendencies, Natsuno feels safe in leaving his window open at nights again. Yet why does he sense he’s still being watched? Why does he have nightmares of her outside his window?

Shiki takes it’s time building up the tension, tantalising, teasing the horror to come. The narrative is presented like a murder mystery case. Each character is named in text with what they do and who there are in the village, introducing the players in the story and giving a lay of the land so that you may piece everything together. The plot doesn’t rush, the writers never giving in to temptation to simply hand over the secrets, reveal the enemy. No one is safe, not even children.

It isn’t long before more people fall ill and eventually die. As the epidemic spreads, families suddenly move out of town in the dead of the night, yet they leave much of their belongings behind. Even the police are leaving, replaced by morning with people who just moved in… Despite all this, the old people, the traditionalists of the village are in denial. Only Doctor Ozaki and his team at the local clinic take the situation seriously.

Ozaki’s character arc is the strongest in Shiki. Watching him go from a simple doctor with overbearing parents into the only person who can find a cure for the epidemic is a gripping experience. With the stress mounting, he resorts to extremes. Nothing annoys me more than having a survival horror story without someone competent. Even worse is when some sanctimonious twit chastises the one guy on the team who keeps everyone alive through extreme measures – and then the terrible writers show the twit to be in the right. Not the case in Shiki; logic beats down the idiots.

The only other characters with their wits about them are a couple of kids and Natsuno, who figure out the situation and fight back. You feel for the kids trying to protect the town while people keep dying around them, and still few people believe in the danger.

At its core, Shiki is about the characters and their reactions in the face of horror and death. We have the old people in denial, the naïve underestimating the threat, the sentimental thinking it will all be fine, and the smart who keep their doors closed and weapons ready. Even among the enemy, it was a great choice to have some who are conflicted about what they are and what they must do to survive. I find it much more powerful when monsters aren’t just creatures of instinct, but have emotion and thoughts at odds with their nature.

Shiki defied all my expectations. I thought I would get a Twilight tween version of survival horror with a coat of anime paint, that groan-inducing experience that makes me feel embarrassed to even know its name. Instead, Shiki is a tense, well-paced, and character driven horror mystery that everyone should know and remember.

Art – High

Beautiful art with an ethereal glow gives a feeling of supernatural unease. The unusual eye design reminds me of interior Kaiser-Fleischer rings or bionic eyes from Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Sound – High

You can’t go wrong with either language. The voice directors pushed their actors to the edges of the emotional spectrum. Much of music is similar to music box melody and wind chime, enhancing the mystery of the narrative, plucked notes marking the time left for characters. Knows when to rely on environmental sounds like cicadas, tractors, rains, etc. instead of music for atmosphere. The opening theme with accompanying morbid visuals sets up Shiki well. The ending theme, however…just put that parrot out of its misery already!

Story – Very High

A horror mystery done right without a reliance on jump scares. No one is safe in this rural town.

Overall Quality – Very High

Recommendation: A must watch unless you hate horror. Shiki manages to take real, human characters and break them in a tense, supernatural epidemic that exposes their true nature. The subtle, yet brutal changes in the characters make Shiki an engaging anime.

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Awards: (hover mouse over each award to see descriptions; click award for more recipients)

Positive:

Negative: None.

Action, Anime Reviews, Comedy, Mystery

Baccano! – Anime Review

5 January 2015 Nefarious Reviews 7 Comments

Japanese Title: Baccano!

Related: Durarara!! (Character crossover & same creator)

Similar: Gungrave

Fullmetal Alchemist

Watched in: Japanese & English

Genre: Historical Supernatural Action Comedy Mystery

Length: 16 episodes

Positives:

Phenomenal English voice track with a plethora of accents.
An intriguing mystery woven around the supernatural.
A varied cast – Isaac and Miria are hilarious.
Well-defined period setting reminiscent of gangster films and a gory version of Murder on the Orient Express.
Add the jazz music, and Baccano has a great atmosphere.

Negatives:

The narrative structure causes confusion at several points.
Long shots lose more detail than they should on characters.

Baccano opens with a historian and his apprentice discussing an event centred on the Flying Pussyfoot, a US continental express train that left a bloody trail in its wake. They can’t decide on where to start or even who should be the main character in their chronicle, and for good reason, as Baccano’s nonlinear narrative jumps all over the place between perspectives and times. Add in a large cast and you can understand the difficulty in deciding how to approach the story.

Baccano takes place primarily in three locations: 1930s Chicago with tensions rising between mafia groups, New York where an alchemist looks to create the elixir of immortality, and in between the two is the Flying Pussyfoot, acting as a nexus for the many plot threads including the legend of the ‘Rail-Tracer,’ a monster said to target train passengers. Baccano’s twist on the mafia genre is the inclusion of immortals, humans who can regenerate from any damage, every drop of spilt blood vacuuming back into their body after death – to disgustingly great visual effect, I might add. This is a tale of alchemy, psychopaths, gangs, thievery and loyalty.

My favourite characters were Isaac and Miria, a thieving duo with the craziest ideas for heists. “We will steal from Earth itself by digging and taking the gold we find without asking.” Genius! They make for a hilarious couple and bring much of the humour to an otherwise dark tale. Their leaps of logic are stupid as hell and oh so funny, yet somehow unexpectedly brilliant.

It would take the whole review to list all characters and tell of their stakes in the narrative. Rest assured that each character is different, bringing their own complexities and personality to the conflict. You never know who will ally with whom, who is evil. Everyone is interconnected and it’s a thrill to see how all the threads tie together in the end.

I love seeing stories told in unusual ways, such as Memento, presented in reverse and a favourite of mine. Unfortunately, Baccano went too far with its nonlinear technique. Often, I wasn’t sure how a current scene had anything to do with the plot until it caught up to another thread. The first few episodes are the same section of time told from different perspectives; however, there is nothing at the start of the new scene to indicate the plot has jumped backwards a short way. Most films that use this repeated-from-another-perspective technique have each jump start with a common event, an explosion, for example, to tell the audience we have rewound.

Despite this attention deficit storytelling, Baccano is an anime well worth watching. Just pay attention to the scene jumps so that you don’t lose yourself, and I recommend watching Baccano twice to uncover all it has to offer. I enjoyed it even more the second time around.

Art – High

Good costume and setting design inspired by gangster period pieces. Nicely detailed backgrounds, but characters lose too much detail at a distance. Suitably gory.

Sound – Very High

One of the best English voice tracks in anime. Great to finally hear a variety of accents. Definitely recommend in English. The jazz music is great too, reminiscent of the era. Intro theme is perfect, giving a sense of the fun and craziness in the show. The accompanying visuals help to remind you of the characters as well. The most notable issue with sound isn’t even a problem; the ending theme is nice, but it doesn’t match the rest of the soundtrack with its piano ballad – reminds of a Japanese Delta Goodrem.

Story – High

A brutal conflict between gangs that spans centuries. From the psychotic to the funny to the weak, the cast of characters is complex and engaging. The nonlinear narrative structure, while unique and interesting, does drop a few balls as it juggles the many plot threads.

Overall Quality – High

Recommendation: A must watch if you enjoy nonlinear narratives. Baccano! is an engaging, if sometimes confusing, tale of warring mafia gangs with a supernatural twist. Watch in English.

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Negative:

Action, Anime Reviews

Afro Samurai – Anime Review

2 January 2015 Nefarious Reviews 3 Comments

Japanese Title: Afro Samurai

Related: Afro Samurai Resurrection (sequel – included in this review)

Similar: Ninja Scroll the movie

Samurai Champloo

Shigurui: Death Frenzy

Watched in: English

Genre: Action

Length: 5 episodes (season 1) & movie (season 2)

Positives:

Gory, stylised action complemented by bleak visuals.
Great and sometimes unusual voice work, particularly from Samuel L. Jackson.

Negatives:

Poor sound mixing muffles speech under the music.
Not much to the plot, even with flashbacks.
In particular, the anime doesn’t explain why the headbands are worth anything beyond pieces of cloth.
Though the action animations are great, the lip movements don’t match the words half the time.

After seeing his father decapitated for a headband, Afro trains up as a samurai to avenge his father and reclaim the number one headband. Afro Samurai is set in a feudal Japan meets futuristic Wild West world of swordfights, gunslingers, and Mexican standoffs, wind blowing through your afro. Legends say the strongest warrior and owner of the number one headband is a god and only the number two can challenge for that power. Being number two, challengers beset Afro as he works his way to the mountain of number one. He knows no love, no happiness, only the murderous violence the number two headband incites in the heart of every man after the power of number one.

Afro’s father vs gunslinger, the new number one.

Afro Samurai’s biggest draws are its over-the-top action and style. The action is in the vein of Kill Bill with its excessive gore, blood spraying in ludicrous amounts. No shot is standard, not shot is dull. The camera zooms into every unsheathing of a sword, light sparking off the blade, every cocking of a hammer, pull of a trigger.

From its desaturated colours to no-cares-given protagonist, Afro Samurai is sombre anime. The only source of humour is Afro’s chain smoking sidekick, Ninja Ninja (both voiced by Samuel L Jackson). He is the antithesis to Afro, never shutting up and a coward. He doesn’t do much beyond provide commentary to the adventure and say what Afro is really thinking. Ninja Ninja is Jackson at his silliest and quite humorous.

Afro Samurai’s bleakness doesn’t just cover its tone but also extends to its sparse plot. On his quest, Afro meets various characters from his childhood (including a Vader-type samurai with a teddy bear head), which the plot does try to inject personality into by way of flashbacks. However, these flashbacks are minimal in content and depth, and little effort is made to characterise in the present. There is also this brotherhood of monks looking to create a clone of Afro with all his skills to claim number one for themselves. While I found their Evangelical preacher of a leader amusing, the brotherhood doesn’t feel particularly relevant and could have been cut from the show with ease, but then you would have even less to populate the narrative.

What bothered me most were the headbands. They never explain why these mere pieces of cloth have any kind of power. I fail to see how you have to own a headband to be the best or challenge the best. Furthermore, if they are as powerful as they claim, can’t one simply bury the headband in the middle of a forest to stop challengers hounding you? If they don’t know you have the headband, they won’t bother challenging. Hell, if you have to have it on you to gain its power, then stuff it in your sock instead of parading around with it on your head. Misery solved.

If you can look past these logical fallacies and want an anime all about the action and blood, then Afro Samurai is for you. On the other hand, if you want more than ankle-deep characterisation and story, then skip this one.

Art – High

Afro Samurai uses a high number of key frames to bring the gruesome animation to life. Desaturated colouring enhances the bleakness of Afro’s quest. The mouth animations don’t match the words half the time – not just out of sync, but the wrong shape altogether (this anime was drawn for English).

Sound – Medium

Great voice work overpowered by the poor mixing of music, which is an even bigger shame since the music itself is decent – a mix of rap and long whistles for Mexican standoffs.

Story – Medium

The flashbacks provide backstory to the characters, but in the present, the plot doesn’t involve much beyond killing a series of enemies to reach the top.

Overall Quality – Medium

Recommendation: For fans of over the top action. Afro Samurai is worth your while if you want an anime all about the action and with enough backstory to give the characters purpose, don’t expect more than that.

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Negative:

Action, Anime Reviews, Fantasy, Horror

Berserk – Review

19 October 2014 Nefarious Reviews 16 Comments

Japanese Title: Kenpuu Denki Berserk

Related: Berserk: The Golden Age (remake)

Similar: Claymore

Gungrave

Watched in: Japanese & English

Genre: Action Horror Fantasy

Length: 25 episodes

Positives:

Good animation, especially considering the show’s age.
Guts is a great lead character that portrays a more believable muscle-bound character than most other anime.
English voice track is well done for the most part.
Properly used horror in an interesting plot.
‘Forces’ music track fills one with epicness.

Negatives:

Incomplete, cliffhanger ending.
First episode is deceptive due to the incomplete ending, and the next few episodes are slow to start.
Opening and closing sequences will leave you horror-struck with lacklustre quality.
Poor use of what little music there is.

Berserk came out during a time when anime in the West was marketed towards a broader audience, even going so far as to censor elements or tone down language to reach the young demographic. Outside of films like Akira and Ghost in the Shell, you had to search high and low for mature anime that wasn’t terrible. Then Berserk came along with its dark themes, unadulterated horror and violence to show us just how adult anime could be.

Berserk centres on Guts, the orphan swordsman, and Griffith, leader of a mercenary band, as they fight for their country of Midland. However, Griffith has ambitions beyond just fighting for a king; he wants to be king. Griffith’s plans test the loyalties of Guts and his mercenaries to the limit. Berserk focuses on themes of loyalty, isolation, and the fundamentals of humanity, the nature of good and evil innate with us. Be forewarned, this anime gets dark, very dark, contains nudity, plenty of violence, and gore everywhere. These aspects are not thrown in at random. No violence for the sake of violence. Gore for the sake of gore. Each use is relevant, an uncensored view of the scene.

Guts is a fantastic protagonist, a badass anti-hero, who wields a giant sword that can cut horses in half. Normally, wielding a giant sword is indicative of a terrible character, one that the creators put no thought into, especially when it comes to physics. With Guts however, he has the look and ferocity of a man who can wield such a weapon. The animators made the effort to show the heft of swinging such a heavy weapon; Guts doesn’t twirl it around like a baton as seen in other anime and games. As a character, Guts goes through a range of emotional and physical trials, exemplifying his depth. When designing a brawny character, look to Guts for the archetype done right.

Griffith, leader of the ‘Band of Hawks’ vs Guts his subordinate.

Griffith too is a suitably complex character with his own strengths and weaknesses, exploring the price of ambition, but to elaborate further would constitute spoilers, so I shall stop there. The supporting cast of mercenaries is a mixed bag of quality, but they are good when it counts, Casca in particular who struggles with her identity as a women in a band of men. Villains, ranging from generals to nobles, are despicably evil, sick and twisted, some with magic elements thrown in.

There are two major narrative faults. The first episode can confuse viewers, being a flash-forward that we never return to because of the second fault, the finale. Berserk is incomplete; after an awesome adventure that keeps getting better and a horrifying finale, the series ends on a cliffhanger. It is clear they intended to have a sequel series, but never got around to it. (They did go back to the beginning again with the recent release of Berserk: The Golden Age; however, that’s a new take on the manga, so you won’t get closure on this version.)

Berserk comes highly recommended. Just don’t watch it if you can’t handle the thought of an incomplete anime. You could read the manga afterwards, however. Also, not for children – can’t stress this enough.

Art – High

You will find higher quality anime these days, of course, but Berserk’s gritty medieval style doesn’t feel dated beyond the use of action lines and slow motion to hide the occasional low frame rate.

Sound – Medium

Has one of the best tracks in anime: ‘Forces.’ Even so, the soundtrack is limited and hardly used. Many battles have no music for some reason, not for added effect. The opening and ending themes are awful, sung in terrible English and don’t fit the series – just…awful. The acting is good in either language, though I found the English suited the characters better, except for Griffith; his English actor can’t command the scene as Griffith should.

Story – High

An excellent fantasy tale of corruption and loyalty with a good cast of characters brought to a halt by a cliffhanger ending and no continuation.

Overall Quality – High

Recommendation: A must for fans of dark fantasy that doesn’t shy away from the realities of battle and horror. No incomplete anime deserved a conclusion more than Berserk.

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Awards: (hover mouse over each award to see descriptions; click award for more recipients)

Positive:

Negative: None

Anime Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Slice of Life

Bakemonogatari – Review

19 October 2014 Nefarious Reviews 12 Comments

Japanese Title: Bakemonogatari

Related: Nisemonogatari (sequel)

Similar: Katanagatari

My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU

Watched in: Japanese

Genre: Contemporary Fantasy Romance

Length: 13 episodes (12 is the finale; 13 is a bonus)

Positives:

Fantastic art style and animation to create a vibrant, yet haunting world.
Well-suited music to the dialogue heavy plot.
Strong male and female protagonists.
Solid voice work to accompany the varied dialogue.
Dark humour from lead female is a pleasant change of pace.

Negatives:

Incoherent story overall marred by throwaway side characters.
Random screens of text flashing every few seconds.
Sexually creepy at times.
Too little character development, even from the protagonists.
No world building despite the incredible visual design.

Bakemonogatari is one weird anime. You don’t get many as weird as this one. This anime has people with spaghetti for brains and staplers as weapons. Probably the most normal thing here, as far as anime goes, is starting with a pantie-shot. From then on, it goes to a whole different dimension. The question we ask ourselves: Is this weirdness good? It does create greatness, but unfortunately, it brings several poor decisions along for the ride.

Immediately, I was struck by the vivid art of Bakemonogatari. Its brilliant use of light, shade, and colour is gorgeous. There is style here, plenty of it. Gradients give backgrounds depth on top of the multi-layering. All colour choice is deliberate, intended to match the mood and atmosphere of the characters and their situations, even at the cost of continuity – a room could be bright one moment and change to dark if the situation called for it, regardless of realism.

Bakemonogatari, one of the most gorgeous shows out there.

It is a shame then that poor choices mar these visuals. Bakemonogatari use a mix of live-action, stop-motion, collage pages, and text for metaphors and similes. At times, the change in art is both hilarious and clever, the rest, tedious and forced. The worst offenders are the screens of text; they flash at random intervals for no purpose. Every instance broke my immersion. Get used to seeing a flat colour with Japanese lettering and the subtitle ‘unidentified cut’ underneath. A dozen times. Per episode. Every episode. Unbelievably stupid decision to kill the atmosphere. It feels as though they had a great idea to use live-action, collages, and so on, and found them to work so well that they thought, ‘why not add more?!’ only to kill it all by going too far. Such a shame.

The plot swims in much the same ocean as the alternative art styles: greatness weighed by poor decisions. We start with protagonist, Araragi, running up a grand spiral staircase in what you can assume is his high-school (most expensive high-school I have ever seen, especially considering no one goes there – more later). He looks up to see a girl falling down the hundred-meter tower. He catches her (don’t question how she drifts twenty meters from the central axis into the stairs) only to find she weighs five kilos (still enough that it should have broken his arms from that height, however). With Senjougahara’s secret revealed, she cannot let him go; she attacks armed with a box cutter and a stapler. After she staples the inside of his cheek for the fun of it, he pulls open his mouth to show no wound. Turns out Araragi recently reverted to human after a stint as a vampire. They become tenuous allies to return Senjougahara’s stolen weight (from a giant ghost crab that also took her memories) with the help of his acquaintance who cured his vampirism.

This initial premise captured my interest; unfortunate then that it lasted but a few episodes before it took a tangent about a little girl with another supernatural problem. The tangent itself wasn’t poor, but lacked development of the main plot and romance. When yet another girl with a paranormal issue enters afterwards, one realises this show is on a formulaic cycle and has little to do with the initial promise. His former life as a vampire has no bearing on the plot. Senjougahara’s backstory seems forgotten, and the relationship development stalls until episode twelve – a fantastic episode, admittedly.

In all, five girls partake, including the lead female, which is why you see Bakemonogatari categorised as a harem anime, yet this isn’t one. Yes, creepy sexualisation exists with a side character or two, but nothing that constitutes a relationship or even a crush required by harem anime. At least they made the correct decision in that aspect.

One of the strangest factors is how the entire world’s population is nine: protagonist, five girls, mystic, minor vampire girl, and Senjougahara’s father. That’s it. No background characters at all, not even in a school big enough to have a glass tower of no purpose, and parking for a thousand bicycles. Is this a problem though? Not really, but it did reduce world depth. This brings me to another negative: no world building. Why is this ghost crab after her? Where do all these supernatural elements come from? Where is the lore, the backstory? You get nothing. The world feels empty despite the visual depth.

Bakemonogatari is heavily dialogue driven. You have to pay attention, as it moves at a brisk pace while you extrapolate what is relevant from the random junk littered throughout. Episodes tend to diverge halfway through into some long-winded tangent before they return on track – medium success rate. The camera likes to cut away to different angles during dialogue. Focus on someone’s feet, then their hands, the corner of the table, the wall, a badly framed shot of the face. Prepare for irrelevance as well. The side of a building, some grass, a window, dirt, more grass…

Allow me to stress that this isn’t for children, and not because of the nudity. Topics of discussion range from Araragi’s virginity to Senjougahara’s choice of clothing and even to some specific types of incest-like fetishes. Honestly, I didn’t even know those were actual fetishes… Anyway, they deal with deep psychological issues caused by broken families and assault on loved ones. Dialogues are largely between the two lead characters, where Bakemonogatari is at its best. The dynamic between these two is a pleasure to watch. I find it hilarious how her attempts to help him with problems (she’s the more mature of the two), end up abusing him instead, making things worse, except, she honestly believes she’s helping. The humour is along those lines: serious in delivery, ironic in reception. His stray lock of hair being a symbol for his arousal level is clever too.

Bakemonogatari is a dialogue heavy anime, highlighted with a variety of viewing angles.

Despite the negatives, Bakemonogatari is still an anime worth watching. For maximum enjoyment, I recommend you watch no more than three episodes at a time to avoid overload and to maintain your focus throughout. Marvel at the art, focus on the lead characters, and you will end with a positive opinion.

Art – Very High

Truly spectacular. From the light to the shade, marvellous work here. However, it is brought down by some obnoxious screen flashes that occur far too often.

Sound – High

The right actors to match the great dialogue. Music is enjoyable too, outside of the opening and closing sequences.

Story – High

Moments of greatness distracted by random elements thrown in for the sake of being random. Three of the five story arcs fall flat.