I am 11 episodes into the series and I do not understand what the big fuss is about this series. To describe my feelings towards this series in the simplest way; its boring.

When I first decided to watch this series I sort of forgot that this was a show by Gonzo and when I recalled this fact once more, I started to somewhat understand why I am not liking this anime. I have never been much of a fan of Gonzo productions because they are always very boring and even if they might give you thousands of action scenes throughout they almost always do not know how to portray these scenes in an entertaining way. And they use these dull action scenes to cover up the fact that they do not really have much of a plot behind their episodes.

From a friend I learned that the character designs are by Murata who has a very peculiar look to his designs, but actually make them very beautiful. The character designs are probably the best part of the series, but just as Gonzo loves to do, there is still a lot of CG animation being used very frequently.  This CG is also by no means seamless and instead gives the show an uglier look than it could have been. I at least like the opening in all this, just because I actually like the song and it manages to give off the expectation that this series could have been good.

In terms of the characters, I once again wander in the bin of boring. Lavie should be interesting, but every time she shows more than one side to her they just prevent it from further being discussed and she drops that attitude behind to go back to her figurative one dimensional self. An example of this is when she was showing tons of dislike and jealousy towards Al and just wanted to go home, but one episode later all was forgiven and her real home was not even a thought on her mind. Al is adorable so I do not mind too much whatever she does and from what I can tell at the end of episode 11, she is finally going to become more interesting. Claus is just the true definition of boring, he means nothing to me and I can never feel much sympathy for him. The only character I actually really like is Dio, who is by far the most entertaining and funniest aspect of this series. I approve of him at least.

I am going to finish this series because I feel like it is only right this far in and with episode 11 showing some sort of promise towards the plot, the show may become better from now till the end. I still do not see why so many love this series, so to the fans I hope you can explain to me what I am missing out on while watching this.

To set the mood x)

Well with the month of love in the air, I figured it would be cool to make a list of eight mangas that I like that I think people should check out this month if they are in the mood to read some good romance mangas. Of course, most of my choices for recommendations are pretty obvious, but sometimes people ignore the obvious series. Sometime within this week I also plan to make my list of Animes to watch to celebrate the month. Why eight you may ask? Well I figured why not. So I hope you somewhat like the recommendations! (and yes, they are in some sort of order) Read the rest of this entry »

When I first heard that Toaru Kagaku no Railgun was going to be animated, I did not care much for it at all. Eventually I finally gave it a chance and I am so glad I did because this series is a joy to watch. Toaru Kagaku no Railgun has been pretty popular, but still has not been getting enough popularity as it should and so, I decided to make a list of 13 reasons why to watch this series to hopefully get more people to watch it!

Read the rest of this entry »

I think this may actually be the most beautiful anime I have ever seen. In the last eight episodes of the series, I was so amazed by everything in Wolf’s Rain and if the whole series was like those last few episodes, this would have a definite chance at being my favourite anime. I think that I would definitely rewatch this series because for the first half of Wolf’s Rain, I did not really know what to expect from it and I was watching it with a different view point then I was in the second half. Nonetheless besides a few things to criticize about this series, which I will get into later in this review, but this was an incredible series that even though it took me awhile to watch, I think its for the better because when it was first released I probably would not have appreciated it as much as I do now when watching it.

The show aired back in 2003 and it is the story of a world where wolves seem to not exist and are only thought to be a legend, but it turns out their existence is not just a story to tell your kids as Kiba, a lonewolf who finds himself in a city where he finds three other wolves who disguise themselves as humans as did he. Together, this new wolf pack decides to set on a mission to go find a paradise, which despite everyone telling them that it is not possible to get to this paradise, they believe that it must be somewhere.

I really did like the characters in this series and almost all of them manage to grow on you at one point. My personal favourite character was Hige who was the most entertaining and interesting, but the rest are good too. Now here is my problem with this series, which is that I never really felt like the main character was interesting enough. Kiba always sort of bored me in comparison to the other characters and being a main character, I just don’t feel like that is good enough. Sometimes it works when a main character “feeds off” of all the other more sub characters who are far more charismatic than the lead, but that happens rarely and I prefer a main character that is more compelling to watch than Kiba. Luckily, I was able to look away from that fault early on and was able to enjoy the series despite that.

If we were just to look at the animation and soundtrack in this series, then I could easily say that Wolf’s Rain was flawless. The animation was beautiful and you could tell right away that so much effort was involved to make this series the way it is. There are so many details that make this series more memorable than most. As for the soundtrack, with Yoko Kanno behind the music, how can it be anything but perfect. “Heaven’s Not Enough”, which she created and obviously not sung, was an amazing song that made so many of the scene seem to be brought to life. I also loved the ending theme and the melodies that played throughout most of the episodes and were some of the main reasons why I always wanted to continue watching this series. The last two episodes in the series were just too amazing to describe. The last episode in the series just took my breath away and it really felt like nothing I had ever seen from any series. Wolf’s Rain will be remembered to me as a series that reached new boundaries and as something I know I will never see and feel again in any other anime.

With all that said, yes I do believe that without a doubt this series should be watched. The more I think about this series the more I like it. I really do believe that before you watch this, you should realize that what you are about to watch i a smart and beautiful anime that will be nothing like you have ever seen before that, and with that, I do not see how you cannot love Wolf’s Rain.

Their really is nothing like a film that tagline’s itself as the “bravest story ever told” ! Obviously, with a movie tagline like that I would have some expectations from it, but after seeing it, I can only leave by saying that it was average and not really the bravest story ever told. Without a doubt was it at times extremely dramatic and even upsetting to a point, but these scenes tended to be the ones that had really weird build ups that didn’t exactly attach to the vague plot.

In terms of the plot, a lot happened, but I infer that in a negative tone. To try to explain the plot in its simplest form, the film is one of those stories with a pro-environment lesson to be learned by the end. There is this one guy in the movie, who is the villain of the story who was sent in a jungle to find a mountain and while on this mission, he does a lot of damage to the jungle and all the animals that are in it, which in turn naturally pisses off all the animals, but the giant lion, Emperor Leo tries to make sure everyone keeps their cool.

During most of the film I could not help but wonder who was the main character in all of this…Based on the DVD cover (as shown above) for the film, I figured that it must be the small white lion, but in the second half of the film he barely had any part towards the story and they instead focused on Emperor Leo. I know that as you read this, you are probably thinking that considering the title is called Emperor Leo, then it must be him, but that definitely is not the case because Leo is just extremely boring. He is that character that provides wisdom and barely says anything in return. Between those two characters I guess they just switched the main focus.

As for the characters, I didn’t feel any sort of attachment to them. Yes, you can argue that it is because they are just animals, but i think you can still feel something for them on an emotional level and this movie just did not capture that and make it compelling enough for its audience. Instead, when depressing and dramatic moments happened, rather than feeling sad or sympathetic, I just had a lingering feeling of being upset. It is a weird feeling to describe, but I cannot explain it in any other way besides the fact that I ended up being upset throughout most of the film.

I actually really wanted to like this movie, and when it started off, I was in a mind set that I was going to enjoy it, but the more i watched, the more it seemed to get worse. I think the main problem is definitely the fact that the story is very messy and just ends up everywhere. I know I did not elaborate too much with this review, but the day after I watched this and hand my pencil in hand at my hand to my paper, all I could think to write about was what I just write. Do I really think this is worth watching? No. It’s not the worst thing out there by a mile shot, but I just do not think it is anything that you should jump at the opportunity to watch.