Blue Exorcist Part 1

Label:

MangaUK

Certificate:

15

Format:

DVD

Discs:

2. (12 episodes + bonus episode)

Running time:

325 mins approx

Subtitles:

English

Video:

16:9 Widescreen

Sound:

Japanese 2.0

Release date:

20th August 2012

RRP:

DVD £24.99

Actual Price:

£16ish - Amazon - Play

Brief synopsis:

Over the years many teenagers have suspected that their family may harbour some deep, dark secrets and 15 year old Rin Okumura has just found out that his family holds what must be the biggest secret of all time, namely that Rin’s real father is none other than the prince of darkness. And we’re not talking Ozzy Osborne here people, we’re talking Satan himself. When Satan’s minions kill Rin’s guardian -a powerful exorcist and the man who cared for both Rin and his brother as if they were his own children - Rin swears to become an exorcist himself to not only to avenge the man who raised him but to also kill the demon that sired him.

The only problem here is that the only place he can train to become an exorcist is the True Cross academy, where the skilled and powerful are taught to conquer and destroy demons wherever they may find them, and in their eyes Rin’s status as son of Satan would put him squarely on their $hit list. Luckily Rin’s twin brother Yukio is already enrolled at True Cross and with his help Rin might just have a chance of gradating to take his place amongst the greatest exorcists that ever lived before either his fellow alumni figure out his heritage or his father’s foot soldiers kill everyone he cares about in order to get to him.

Comments:

Ok, so the Pros for this series. Well it has a diverse cast of interesting characters with eye catching character designs, plenty of action and far reaching plot. On the whole, all of these elements are well above average and it’s all wrapped up nicely with some solid quality animation, catchy music and some very tasty voice acting

And now the Cons… well those characters and their designs and that plot and, well pretty much everything… I just can’t help but shake the feeling that they’re all just a little too familiar.

It looks and feels and acts and smells like, well a whole bunch of other shows merged together in one big melting pot. Just of the top of my head I can see story elements, character designs etc pulled also verbatim from the likes of Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou, Vampire Knight, Xam’d: Lost Memories, Corpse Princess, Occult Academy, Soul Eater, Negima, D Grey Man, Fairy Tail and that Gainax thing with the spirals that I can never spell correctly (Tagen Topper Guran Lagoon maybe?) Plot wise - and character wise - it’s like production company A1 pictures (who also brought us some of the series I’ve mentioned above) seem to have built this series piece by piece using a giant Woolworths pic & mix of shounen anime storylines as the bricks and liberal doses of the TVTropes website as the mortar.

The original Manga from which this series is taken sold shedloads over in Japan but the more I look at it the more it seems less about breaking new ground and more about giving the public what they want, and they did that in spades. That’s not to say that this is totally bad thing as once you’ve got into the rhythm of things after a couple of episodes as then you totally know what you’re getting. Oh they’re all here; there’s the swimsuit episode, the cooking battle episode, the “mysterious background character turned out to be pretty damn important” episode, the “class bitch is actually pretty decent deep inside” episode, the “antagonistic character becomes an ally once defeated” episode… Actually looking back on that list I’m trying to figure out if I should stop listing this point as a “Con” and change it to a “Pro”. Bugger it, I’m changing it to a Pro as while this must be one of the most derivative series I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a few) but once it gets going it can be quite a lot of fun.

Once thing I do have to mention though is the lack of dub track which smacks slightly of cost cutting, especially as there’s the odd line here and there that the subbers have seemingly “forgotten” to subtitle. While it’s kinda nostalgic to be transported back to those days where anime was subtitles only, the option of a dub track would have been nicer. Looking back though I’m glad they didn’t go whole hog and reduce the picture quality down to a third or fourth generation VHS bootleg being passed around between friends. If anyone tells you “those were the days”, slap them as those days were crap. Ahem, sorry, I digress. Apparently there’s a dub coming out over in the states later in the year so there’s a good chance of a UK rerelease next year with a dub track, if you like that kind of thing.

Extras:

There’s an extra unaired episode, some bonus short episodes, Textless opening and closing animations and some trailers.

Blue Exorcist Part 1 is available now from most high streets and online retailers whilst Blue Exorcist Part 2 will be released later in the year.

 

 

Angel Beats Complete Collection

Label:

MangaUk

Certificate:

15

Format:

Blu-Ray

Discs:

2. (13 episodes + bonus episode)

Running time:

330 mins approx

Subtitles:

English

Video:

16:9 widescreen

Sound:

English DTS-HD, Japanese DTS-HD

Release date:

25th June 2012

RRP:

DVD £39.99

Actual Price:

£29ish - Amazon - Play

Brief synopsis:

There’s as many different expectation of the afterlife as there are viewpoints with which to believe in it. What most won’t be expecting though is that the afterlife, or at least purgatory, looks surprisingly like your average high-school, meaning that those who say “High-school is Hell” may be at least partly right. Recently deceased teenager Otonashi awakes in this strange world to find that the afterlife is some kind of crazy battle ground in which the SSS – the Shinda Sekai Sensen - fight against an “Angel” who it would seem has taken it upon herself to make sure that those linger too long on their way to the hereafter get moved along quickly, whether they like it or not.

Comments:

Every so often when there’s been a bit of a dry patch in the “good anime” harvest, there's a show that reminds me what it was I loved about these funny little Japanese cartoons in the first place. When we're awash with a dirge of cookie cutter school-days slice of life cutesy-cutesy moe-moe shows that the anime companies are putting out as safe bet money makers in these days of financial woes, every now and again there’s a show that dares to be a bit different, a bit clever or just a bit weird. (or, in the case of Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, tries to max out all three at the same time.)

When trying to sum up Angel Beats in a single sentence, you can’t go far wrong with “The passing over of Haruhi Suzumiya”. Seriously, that’s about all you need to know to get the jist of this show. Basically a Haruhi clone dies, winds up in purgatory, figures she doesn’t like what she finds and decides whip up a whole Matrixload of guns, rally up the like-minded and lay down some serious smack down right on God’s doorstep. Apart from that it’s actually quite hard to pin down what Angel Beats actually is as it can swing from action/drama to black comedy to tearjerker to slapstick and back again to action/drama in a matter of seconds, and it can do heaps better than 99% of other series out there. There’s elements of a lot of other shows, movies etc that you just wouldn’t expect to go together, like the aforementioned Haruhi Suzumiya series and The Matrix franchise or Haibane Renami and Jacob’s Ladder… yes, that weird old scary-ass movie with Tim Robbins.

 Conceived and written by Jun Maeda with character designs by Na-Ga, both of whom harking from Key, the visual novel group that created the likes of Kanon, Air and Clannad, you just know that this is a series that’s not going to shy away from the idea of death, loss, grief, sad girls in snow and telling the powers that be exactly where they can stick it all. But on the whole it’s not really about fighting angels or rebelling against God – and I’m not really giving anything away here – it’s more about learning to deal with in death the things you couldn’t deal with in life before being able to move on to the next world without any regrets... again kinda like Jacob's Ladder, but with 100% less Macauly Culkin, which is always a good thing.

The animation is top notch all the way through and the attention to detail, especially on firearms is exquisite. In fact, the weaponry is rendered so accurately that a large chunk of the animation team must either be firearms aficionados or the kind of people that the police are keeping a close eye on, or with the way it’s going these days it’s probably both.

The sound work and the soundtrack are well above average. The “in universe” music (also written by Jun Maeda) plays a small but powerful part in the plot as several of the secondary cast are part of a band and their performances become important not only to the main characters fight against their oppressor(s) but also to their own stories. Also, the background music is “played” with at times, building up expectations only to knock you down when the action takes a sudden turn in another direction.

Both the dub and the original Japanese are well above average, the dub if anything being better than the Sub. It’s really worth listening to what’s going on in the background where many of the main voice actors get to pull double, triple or often quadruple duty throwing in a number of comedic remarks.

The only thing that works against this series is that during production the episode count was cut down from 26 episodes down to 13, meaning that towards the end of the series a number of characters get some very rushed development moments before they’re pushed out of the door while some others get none at all. For a show that was doing so well to blend moments of both comedy and action with decently fleshed out character studies, it ends up feeling like the ball’s been fumbled at the last minute. The last few episodes actually get to the point where you can almost see/feel/smell/whatever where they’ve skipped entire episodes and storylines to finish the show off in their allotted amount of screen time. It doesn’t help that the bonus 14th episode does nothing to flesh out any of the previously neglected characters, going down the pure slapstick comedy route instead which is a crying shame and a huge wasted opportunity.

Extras:

Textless opening and closing animations, bonus 14th episode.

Angel Beats Complete Collection is available now on Blu-Ray and DVD from most high streets and online retailer, but with the outstanding quality of both the visuals and the audio on this release, it’s really worth going for the Blu-ray version.