20th - Review of Digimon Xros Wars
Ah yes and now back to your regularly scheduled reviews that I like doing.
Title: Digimon Xros Wars (alternatively Digimon Xros Wars: The Evil Death Generals and the Seven Kingdoms for the second half, but that's a mouthful)
Genre: Shonen, Action, Mecha
Availability: Probably available via some overpriced DVDs/BD on CD Japan and Amazon
Episode Count: 54
Openings: Never Give Up + New World (contains spoilers!)
Endings: Unfortunately this series is missing those D:
Summary:
"Taiki Kudou, an upbeat seventh-grade boy who always helps people in need, encounters a Digimon named Shoutmon, who brings him and his friends to the Digital World. With his friends Akari Hinomoto and Zenjirou Tsurugi, they form Team Xros Heart to compete against rival teams battling for supremacy, with their ultimate goal of taking down the evil Bagura Empire, who plans to conquer the Digital World."
- ANN (because dear god wikipedia couldn't spoil more if they tried)
Plot - 6/10
Plot is typical of what you would expect for a shonen children's show, but at least it pulls it off decently. Basically, traveling among the different zones to collect macguffins to claim control of the digital world. Then in the second half it switches to defeating each boss or general of the world. However each world is varied, and there's generally a nice story hidden in there somewhere. However, it didn't really captivate my interest until around when Beelzebubmon showed up. It has a couple of funny and serious moments I liked, but those were a bit sparse considering the length of the series.
Oh and it can sometimes be Gurren Lagann on G rated crack.
Seriously, while some people complained about the DigiXrosing, I found it to be a bit refreshing. And its not like we haven't had similar concepts before, it can be traced all the way all the back to Omnimon! While the designs can be stupid and there's a few nagging things that bug me (why is the piece that makes Shoutmon X4 into X4B only that and not going all the way to X5? And he doesn't even get wings from the upgrade!) the overall idea is pretty okay and they amp up the ridiculousness every couple of episodes with new combinations and a mecha like feel. But I just can't help but wonder why they just didn't fuse the entire army together all the time, since higher combinations had a better success rate.
One other positive aspect was that instead of humans being limited to one Digimon partner at a time, they all acted as a big army and real tactics came into play, showing off some big battles.
However the plot is pretty standard, nothing special and just about every time when the heroes find themselves in danger they can bullshit their way out of it. And the ending is lukewarm, is all I can say (with the exception of the sheer over the topness that is the final form of Shoutmon).
Characters - 5/10
The character are a mixed bag, especially when you have an upwards of 30 or so reoccurring ones by the end of its run. The main character himself is a bit of a sue, who is always right. It's annoying, but what kept me from hating him is that he was a tactician, not poor hotblooded soul who just kept going or relying on pure luck to pull through. Most of the other human characters aren't that interesting, with the exception of Kiriha, who gets sort of his own character arc in the second half. And maybe Yuu to a degree.
As far as monsters go, Mervamon cracks me up. I think that she was intended to be a parody of girls portrayed in anime to an extent. Big stonking tits, assshots, crotch shots when she upgrades her form, boob lasers, les yay with her partner and a tsundere on top of that. It's hard to take her seriously most of the time, but she ended up being a fun character.
And then there's Ballistamon, who I took an unexpected liking too with his backstory. Really I just found his backstory to be kind of cute and adorable with Shoutmon. There's also Beelzebumon, who has a nice backstory and is a walking can of unloaded badass, but sadly underused and is left out of the cross fusions most of the time.
However, even with some of the bright spots, most of the characters are woefully flat or never get any screentime after their debut. Like just about all the villains, except for Blastmon, for him being a large ham made him distinguishable among the group.
Animation - 5/10
Subpar most of the time. Some of the designs look fine and its a colorful series but the quality leaves much to be desired. There is one decent animator on the team (the person who animated 19, 43, the finale and other episodes I'm forgetting) who's animation looks more fluid and stylized (but a little too shiny and some weird faces crop up), but one animator can only do so much. Shame, because I would have bumped up the rating a whole point if the whole series looked like this.
Music - 8.5/10
This is where the best stuff is unfortunately. All of the vocal songs are great, but I personally didn't care much for Never Give Up! But everything else is wonderful and all of the battle songs are sung by Wada Kouji. The final one is even a trio between him and two other experienced singes in the Digimon field (including the one who sung brave heart from the first series). Good blood pumping music. The OST itself is alright, with a couple of good BGMs like this one.
Overall, I'm going to give this series a 6/10. Better then most kids shows these days, but if you're looking to get into Digimon, I recommend watching the first Japanese movie, then Adventure, then the second movie (which is my favorite of the Digimon animated works), then Tamers. Then you can decide for yourself if you like the franchise enough to try this.
Also I got a tumblr the other day, and this time Im actually using it.
Title: Digimon Xros Wars (alternatively Digimon Xros Wars: The Evil Death Generals and the Seven Kingdoms for the second half, but that's a mouthful)
Genre: Shonen, Action, Mecha
Availability: Probably available via some overpriced DVDs/BD on CD Japan and Amazon
Episode Count: 54
Openings: Never Give Up + New World (contains spoilers!)
Endings: Unfortunately this series is missing those D:
Summary:
"Taiki Kudou, an upbeat seventh-grade boy who always helps people in need, encounters a Digimon named Shoutmon, who brings him and his friends to the Digital World. With his friends Akari Hinomoto and Zenjirou Tsurugi, they form Team Xros Heart to compete against rival teams battling for supremacy, with their ultimate goal of taking down the evil Bagura Empire, who plans to conquer the Digital World."
- ANN (because dear god wikipedia couldn't spoil more if they tried)
Plot - 6/10
Plot is typical of what you would expect for a shonen children's show, but at least it pulls it off decently. Basically, traveling among the different zones to collect macguffins to claim control of the digital world. Then in the second half it switches to defeating each boss or general of the world. However each world is varied, and there's generally a nice story hidden in there somewhere. However, it didn't really captivate my interest until around when Beelzebubmon showed up. It has a couple of funny and serious moments I liked, but those were a bit sparse considering the length of the series.
Oh and it can sometimes be Gurren Lagann on G rated crack.
Seriously, while some people complained about the DigiXrosing, I found it to be a bit refreshing. And its not like we haven't had similar concepts before, it can be traced all the way all the back to Omnimon! While the designs can be stupid and there's a few nagging things that bug me (why is the piece that makes Shoutmon X4 into X4B only that and not going all the way to X5? And he doesn't even get wings from the upgrade!) the overall idea is pretty okay and they amp up the ridiculousness every couple of episodes with new combinations and a mecha like feel. But I just can't help but wonder why they just didn't fuse the entire army together all the time, since higher combinations had a better success rate.
One other positive aspect was that instead of humans being limited to one Digimon partner at a time, they all acted as a big army and real tactics came into play, showing off some big battles.
However the plot is pretty standard, nothing special and just about every time when the heroes find themselves in danger they can bullshit their way out of it. And the ending is lukewarm, is all I can say (with the exception of the sheer over the topness that is the final form of Shoutmon).
Characters - 5/10
The character are a mixed bag, especially when you have an upwards of 30 or so reoccurring ones by the end of its run. The main character himself is a bit of a sue, who is always right. It's annoying, but what kept me from hating him is that he was a tactician, not poor hotblooded soul who just kept going or relying on pure luck to pull through. Most of the other human characters aren't that interesting, with the exception of Kiriha, who gets sort of his own character arc in the second half. And maybe Yuu to a degree.
As far as monsters go, Mervamon cracks me up. I think that she was intended to be a parody of girls portrayed in anime to an extent. Big stonking tits, assshots, crotch shots when she upgrades her form, boob lasers, les yay with her partner and a tsundere on top of that. It's hard to take her seriously most of the time, but she ended up being a fun character.
And then there's Ballistamon, who I took an unexpected liking too with his backstory. Really I just found his backstory to be kind of cute and adorable with Shoutmon. There's also Beelzebumon, who has a nice backstory and is a walking can of unloaded badass, but sadly underused and is left out of the cross fusions most of the time.
However, even with some of the bright spots, most of the characters are woefully flat or never get any screentime after their debut. Like just about all the villains, except for Blastmon, for him being a large ham made him distinguishable among the group.
Animation - 5/10
Subpar most of the time. Some of the designs look fine and its a colorful series but the quality leaves much to be desired. There is one decent animator on the team (the person who animated 19, 43, the finale and other episodes I'm forgetting) who's animation looks more fluid and stylized (but a little too shiny and some weird faces crop up), but one animator can only do so much. Shame, because I would have bumped up the rating a whole point if the whole series looked like this.
Music - 8.5/10
This is where the best stuff is unfortunately. All of the vocal songs are great, but I personally didn't care much for Never Give Up! But everything else is wonderful and all of the battle songs are sung by Wada Kouji. The final one is even a trio between him and two other experienced singes in the Digimon field (including the one who sung brave heart from the first series). Good blood pumping music. The OST itself is alright, with a couple of good BGMs like this one.
Overall, I'm going to give this series a 6/10. Better then most kids shows these days, but if you're looking to get into Digimon, I recommend watching the first Japanese movie, then Adventure, then the second movie (which is my favorite of the Digimon animated works), then Tamers. Then you can decide for yourself if you like the franchise enough to try this.
Also I got a tumblr the other day, and this time Im actually using it.