I just bought the North American release of Queen's Blade season 1 and it came with these ''special episodes.'' They were so horrible I had to write a review immediately to save you pain and anguish. I was disappointed on every front (story, art, sound, etc., all of it).
It's important to note that this review is for the special episodes of season 1. The special episodes of season 2 are significantly better.
[For the record, I enjoy Queen's Blade itself and I gave it 7/10. This is a review from a Queen's Blade fan. Queen's Blade season 2 is in my
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Sep 14, 2010
Doujin Work
(Anime)
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Not Recommended Preliminary
(4/12 eps)
i recently rented the first volume (episodes 1-4) of an anime called Dojin Work and i wanted to share my 2 cents on it.
The Story: First scene: We start out on a train with the main character (as seen in the picture above, i don't remember her name, but it's not important anyways lol). there is a misunderstanding and a lesbian joke breaks out (between 2 girls who are obviously underaged). this joke drags on for 5 minutes. this is foreshadowing that you will hear sexual pedophile jokes A LOT in every episode, in fact, most of the jokes are for pedophiles. the ... man in a suit you see in the background carrying an even littler girl on his shoulders is named Justice (ironicly). his little girl companion is always wearing a new cosplay outfit for each scene, from a maid outfit to a policewoman, flight attendant, etc. he acts like a gentleman but he hits on little girls a lot. Anyways, back to the story. the main character who is obviously underdeveloped finds out her friend makes perverted doujinshi (japanese fan comics). she makes comics about sexual assault. what? yeah, the cover of her book is very explicit (a teen girl tied up in an awkward position). the main character finds out money can be earned by selling doujinshi at doujinshi events, so she decides she wants to make her own fan comic and sell it. most of the comic releif comes from the main character getting embarrased as she discovers the world of (erotic) fan comics, then her friends give her a hard time about it, and then she gets pissed off. this cycle repeats for almost every joke and almost always involves pedophile puns and sexual puns. i only found a few funny, and by ''a few'', i mean i can count the number of times i laughed on my 2 hands... this pattern gets old after a few episodes. the little girl with the green beret has some kind of companion the size of coin. it's a pair of short-shorts or underwear of some kind, and it has legs, arms and eyes. it dances around shaking it's booty and walking on people. nobody notices it or acknowleges it. kinda creepy they made it a pair of underwear, adding to the disturbia of the pedophile theme. the intro doesn't make any sense. parts of it show the main character's boobs grow, and another part shows Justice grows into a giant and shoot a laser out of his eyeball at a forest. waahhh???? the main character is only concerned with money, all the more reason why kids should not be fooled by the underaged characters or cutesy bishoujo (pretty girl) style, it teaches bad morales all 'round. every episode has a sexual title and usualy shows the main character stark naked with emprovised censorship (i.e. trees, furniture, etc.). the story crawls at a snail's pace and grounds to a halt in some episodes, all in favor of a truck-load of pedophile jokes and puns in every conversation. The Animation: The animation for the most-part is non-existant because 90% of the show is talking. but when characters start to move it is very smooth and well executed, especialy to comic effect. characters will slide across the screen. when they turn around it looks like they are a 2-dimensional paper cut-out and they dissapear for a second, as if made of a flat peice of paper. i thought this was very cool and innovative. it seems these 2 effects use computer animation so it's very smooth. that's about all i can say for the animation. The Art Style: most of the characters are little girls. extra characters such as pedestrains and citizens in the background are a single flat mellow color like light green and light orange, which i thought was interesting. lots of bright mellow colors will ease your mind (and then the pedophile jokes will make you uncomfortable again). there are almost no ripples in the characters' clothes unlike most anime, which i found intruiging. a cutesy bishoujo style. The Sound Design: the intro and ending credits theme songs were a little annoying. this is coming from a guy who absolutely loves j-pop, beleive me when i say that. i didn't watch them more than once. the voice acting is definitely great and i give kudos for that. sound effects for the jokes are perfectly implimented for full comic effect and really enhances the comedy. The Final Score: in case you didn't catch on yet, this show is for pedophiles. nothing but pedophile jokes every few minutes, with less than 10 exceptions after 4 episodes! animation though sparce, was great, and the voice acting helped me endure the pedophile jokes until episode 4 was finished. i'm a big fan of the anime Comic Party, which teaches all about doijinshi and teaches great morals, even though it is targeted towards a younger audience. i was looking forward to Doujin Work as a modern take on Comic Party and its educational look into the world of doujinshi, but instead got a pedo-fest. only pedophiles should watch this. i hated 99% of the jokes and the pedophile theme was overkill, but for the good (if not absent for the most-part) animation, nice mellow art style, satisfying sound design and great voice acting, i give this anime a score of 2.5/10. this anime gets Pedo Bear's seal of approval, but not mine you will learn nothing about doujinshi watching doujin work. this show completely ignores all genres of fan comics except for erotic ones, as if that makes up the entirety of doujinshi. and putting little girls in as characters who make these comics is just sick. if you're looking for an anime dedicated to the world of doujinshi i reccomend Comic Party, even though it is really corny and cheesy. fyi Comic Party Revolution (not to be confused with Comic Party) is pure fan service and has absolutely nothing to do with the world of doujinshi. i also reccomend the much more mature anime called Genshiken. it's a very accurate, funny, mature, smart, and well written series. It's shows like Doujin Work that give anime a bad name.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Sep 14, 2010 Not Recommended Preliminary
(4/24 eps)
This is a review for the first volume (disc) of Shuffle! It was so bad that I just had to say something about it, so here it is. :P there are spoilers BUT you will be warned before i get to them
- Story - This anime is about a regular Japanese high school boy who lives with a girl who is his childhood friend in his house. I'm not even going to mention their names because that is how forgettable they are... She makes food for him every day and has been doing this since they were kids it seems. The twist to this show is ... that Heaven and Hell have connected to our mortal realm in the middle, and now people from heaven and hell are immigrating to our dimension. The only visual aspect of these other-worldly beings is their ears (they don’t have clichés like horns or wings). People from Heaven have pointy ears that point up, and people from Hell have longer pointy ears that hang down. Surprisingly the people from heaven don’t act like goody-goodies and the people from hell don’t act evil, they all act like any normal human. They do have magic powers, but this is only shown once in disc 1. The theme of this whole Heaven-and-Hell thing is barely involved in the first episodes, and becomes quickly irrelevant. I do not know if it’s supposed to be subtle or if this is just a lazy move, but it’s leaves me wondering why they even bothered to put it in the plot in the first place if the creators won’t even use this plot device. You won't even get to see what Heaven or Hell looks like (at least for the first 4 episodes), nor will you see anything super-natural except for pointy ears and 1 magical attack (at least for the first 4 episodes). The main ''protagonist'' boy gets two new neighbors: God and Lucifer. God and Lucifer act like normal people and are even good friends. They both have an only-child-daughter. The daughter of God and the daughter of Lucifer have encountered the main character boy on one occasion when they were all very little. The guy was kind to them one time, and they’ve both had a crush on him ever since. Now God and Lucifer are offering the guy their daughters to marry him so that he may become the next king of either Hell or Heaven, and so he is stuck with this choice of which girl he wants to be with. There is also a very little girl who has come to Earth from Hell. This little girl named Prim has heard all about how nice the guy was (one time) to Lucifer’s daughter, so she likes him too. However, he completely ignores this huge choice he has to make, and decides to try to live his life normally. He gets annoyed when anything interferes with his normal life. He's kind of a jerk. The guy doesn’t seem all that interested in girls. He’s got something like 5 girls who want him but he doesn’t care at all. He has no interest in girls. I swear something is wrong with him. His super-perverted friend is envious of his position. There are a lot of things that bother me about this anime… One thing that bothers me about Shuffle! is that the main character guy is portrayed by the director as a ‘nice guy’, but he expects the girl he lives with to cook for him everyday and a whole bunch of other stuff, and she obeys. If she doesn’t do a good job then she feels guilty and he is disappointed. At one point he thinks to himself something along the lines of, “I feel kind of bad not helping her out with the housework and cooking…,” but instead he decides to continue sitting on the couch (literally). That is the only single moment he even considers helping her out with stuff. I think she even cleans his whole freakin house. I have no idea why these girls like this guy besides him being nice to them 1 time years ago, and the fact that he looks like every average anime boy. He has no skills, no hobbies, no interesting past, no talents; he's just a guy. That's the only way I can describe him; just a guy. Perhaps he has no traits because the creators of the show wanted a blank slate that male viewers can use to feel ''in-the-show'', but the reason why the girls want him still eludes me.... Whoever made this show has a twisted perspective of the world, and thinks that what defines a ''nice guy'' is a guy who looks average, acts average, has no brains, expects women to do his bidding and [SPOILERS] is allowed to punch his best friend in the gut with all his might (really happens in first episode). [SPOILERS] Let me elaborate on that ''punching'' thing. The guy and girl are walking to school. The guy opens the door to the classroom and his best friend jumps out and embraces the guy, thinking he is the girl as he shouts her name. The guy then punches his best friend in the gut with a great amount of force as a shock-wave can be heard and seen votrexing out from his best friend's back. This is portrayed as a comic relief, but I wasn't laughing... Anyways... Since this guy has so many girls wanting him, there are armies of perverted creeps who are jealous of him. I’m not exaggerating, there are literally hundreds of perverted guys who stalk him and try to abduct him and/or kill him in mob-formation, and they insult him every chance they get. They come out to ambush him at his school and in the streets, and chase him. They are in stereotypical ‘manly’ groups like jocks or delinquents, etc. They are in every episode I’ve seen and they freak me out. They also stalk the girls once in a while, peeking up the skirt of Lucifer’s daughter at one point. This makes me sick. They are drawn with ugly faces and creepy expressions. The girls don’t seem to mind the competition of one-another, as if this guy is soooo great that he is worth the self-esteem they have to put aside for him. [SPOILER YOU SHOULD READ] One episode is about a picnic that the group is planning. The girls all want to cook a meal to impress the guy. However, the daughter of the Devil doesn’t know how to cook and is feeling worthless. The guy tries to reassure her, but instead of saying something encouraging like “Don’t worry, it’s the thought that counts,” or, “I don’t need a fancy meal or material objects to know that you care about me,” instead he says something along the lines of, “I’m sure you’ll make a great meal for me.” He says this with a smile. I was like, wtf? What an ass. And so they have their picnic and he expects to eat all the girls’ food that they made for him. One of the only things I liked about this show was [SPOILERS] the comic relief that the daughter of God brings to the show. Whenever God says embarrassing things about his daughter, she somehow appears behind him with the nearest heavy/sharp object and hits him over the head with it, knocking him out. She then drags him home. I thought this was hilarious. - Art Style - The characters’ faces are drawn in a subtlety unique style that I have not seen before. For example, the girls in Air TV and Kanon have an identical style to how their faces are drawn, but I have not seen the faces of Shuffle! anywhere else. The animation is average, meaning it’s not so great that I noticed it, but it’s not so bad that I noticed it either. It’s meh. Nothing to note here in animation quality, background paintings or graphic quality. - Final Score - This anime is extremely shallow, the girls are dumb and the main character guy is a free-loading jerk. He doesn’t do anything to make him a jerk, but it’s what he Doesn’t do: he doesn’t care about the girls almost at all; he doesn’t feel guilt for not helping the girls with things like housework or food preparation or hurting their feelings; and he doesn’t show any sincere compassion or deep thoughts (this guy’s head is totally empty). The story is just about a bunch of girls wanting some guy who was nice to them on 1 occasion, years prior. The whole Heaven and Hell thing barely exists in the story in the beginning, and is completely unimportant after a few episodes. If you want to see hot anime chicks then by all means watch it, but that’s all this anime is: hot anime chicks, nothing more or less. [Shuffle! in a nutshell: a bunch of girls like some guy and he doesn’t care, and they don't care that he doesn't care.] Worst of all (and the thing that horrifies me the most) is that this show takes itself seriously! For the unique cute faces of the girls and the comic relief of God’s daughter, I can only give this anime a Horrible score of 1/10 (a generous score imo). Those are the only things keeping me from giving this 0/10. If you're a female with self-respect, or if you're a male who respects females, I would NOT recommend this anime for you. On the contrary, I'd tell you to stay away from it. It's grotesque. It's disgusting. It's degenerate. I hate to offend fans of this show but it's hard to deny what the show is trying to impose on its audience, which is ''Women belong in the kitchen.'' If you're into that, regardless of your gender, then by all means, don't let my review dampen your spirits. It's just my (strong) opinion :P However, if you're a female who wants to cook, clean, etc. for your man who doesn't show you any affection, or if you're a male who thinks females should cook, clean, etc. for you without any obligation, then this anime is Definitely for you. Granted, I only reviewed episodes 1-4 so there might be things in later episodes that contradict my review, but come on, the first episodes were a hugely distasteful first impression, and 4 episodes goes beyond giving the benefit of the doubt. This show has told me what it's about and I'm dropping it. It got it's chance, and I even gave it the benefit of the doubt by going all the way to episode 4. It's shows like Shuffle! that give anime a bad name, and allows mainstream media to politically attack otaku culture as vulgar and in poor moral taste.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Sep 9, 2010 Not Recommended Preliminary
(4/13 eps)
This anime had a good concept but terrible execution. I wanted to review it for a long time so here it is. There's spoilers in this review BUT you'll be warned beforehand and you'll be glad I spoiled it for you LOL! This anime was so misleading and bad that I just had to review it for you to save you pain and time.
Basicly there's some kind of war going on in some kind of 3rd-world country and some kind of war journalists (I think they are Japanese but that doesn't matter) go to this country to get pictures because that's their job or as ... they like to say, their ''passion'' or whatever. So the entire show is told through a camera lense, which was artsy and original at first. It's a very detailed digital view but gets old after a while and serves less & less symbolic purpose as the show goes on. The main character girl who is holding the camera takes pictures throughout the show and we see these nice pictures. They are portrayed as nice pictures, which they are, but none of them are really meaningful. Beleive me I'm a photographer, filmmaker and cinematographer. Only a few parts of the show are shot normally (not through a camera). The story is this girl war journalist got a lucky shot on the country's flag the moment a back-lit girl was praying and her silouhette could be seen through the flag. Suddenly this picture became the people's symbol for peace, or morality, and the flag became a symbol for.... hope i guess, for the war to stop.... Anyways some terrorists stole it and now a special U.N. team is assembled to retrieve the stolen flag. The girl who took the picture is recruited onto this team to document the mission(s). What's supposed to make this U.N. team I mentioned earlier 'special' is a giant robot vehicle thing they have as part of their main arsenal. It transforms into a humanoid mode and a car-ish mode. The movements it makes sound more like a little toy than a war machine. Also it's only weapon is a machine gun, Big Whoop! At least give it a laser gun sheesh.... At least it sort-of looks cool. You'll notice something wrong right away: the war-torn country is too clean. Even the destroyed parts of town are clean and lack any grim detail. The characters, whom most of which are either jounalists who put their necks out into dangerous situations, or soldiers who put their necks out into dangerous situations, are not dirty at all. This anime about the horrors of war, is just not graphic in any way. The only graphic part about this anime is the lack of vibrant colors, but even the washed-out colors that are present are solid and clear. The graphic quality isn't only lacking in the art style, it's also lacking in the plot and narrative. You won't see much violence. (SPOILERS) The most violence you'll see (for 4 episodes) are one guy getting shot in the arm and bad guys getting shot in the desert with the desert sand getting kicked up to block our view. Then the soldiers return from the mission stone-cold and melancholy to show how terrible war is. Seriously, you'll see 1 blood stain after 4 episodes. I am dumb-founded that an anime like FLAG, which is supposed to be about the horrors of war, actually censors violence, and then follows-up with scenes like the soldiers moping around as if we just saw something truely horrifying that will scar the grey matter of our brains forever and give us post traumatic stress syndrome. There are comedy anime with more blood and violence than FLAG.... This is just unacceptable. Also the show usually prefers to show the aftermath of skirmishes instead of the battles themselves because the main focus is the poorly-implied conflict going on in the characters' minimaly-present souls. Another thing disappointing is the intelligence of this so-called super secret team of soldiers. (SPOILERS) This is one of those spoilers that you'll be glad i spoiled for you: In one scene the team (I'll just call them ''the team'' from here on) thinks they know where the terrorists are hiding. They go in an unarmed helicopter to check out this fortress in a twisting valley. They stay at a safe distance and send out a small scout drone. It flies over there and discovers heavy anti-air defenses. So what does this super secret team do? Head back to base? Report this intelligence to command? Call in reinforcements? No. They fly this unarmed, non-armored helicopter straight into the hostile airspace. Guess what happens next? They get shot at and the pilot is hit in the arm and only Then do they retreat! I could not Believe what I just saw! And nobody acknowledged this as a stupid move! Bunch'a idiots. It was at this point that FLAG lost all credibility and I stopped giving it chances (many chances were spent in vain....) This show also tries to portray war journalists just as brave and valiant as a front-line soldier, which can be true sometimes, but this show fails to do even that. (SPOILERS) Maybe if they showed the main character being shot at or help an injured person or something, but she is never in danger. One scene shows the main character go to a building where a fellow war journalist was killed in an explosion. Her friend war journalist puts a flower in a cup next to the dead guy's camera and has a big monologue about how war journalists are to be respected and are very courageous and all that. Well sure but, could we at least see the explosion so we have some kind of remorse for the guy? We never even see this guy, therefor I don't care about him much. (SPOILERS) Action scenes (of which there are very, very few) have no music whatsoever and like I mentioned, you'll only see 1 blood stain. I know I didn't see even a single dead terrorist! And you will only see (in the first 4 episodes) one far away terrorist as seen from night vision in only one shot. It's like the show can't wait to get these parts over with and get back to the boring-as-hell parts. Another thing that REALLY bothers me is this girl was recruited to document the missions of this team, but guess what? (SPOILERS) They don't allow her to go with them on their missions because it's too dangerous! WHAT THE HELL?? The show makes itself redundant right from the get-go! So she stays at the base taking pictures of the scenery, I am not joking about this at all. She takes pictures of the sourounding mountians and wildlife while waiting for the team to return. You have got to be kidding me. All sense of risk, danger and excitement is swiftly extinguished right from the beginning. So that's my review. FLAG was a good concept but they were afraid to show violence in a show about violence, they were unable to show intelligent characters in a show about intelligent characters, and they were unable to show graphic images in a graphic show. If anything, FLAG should have been the bloodiest, most disturbing & grotesque anime ever created! Documentaries on the history channel are vastly more entertaining than FLAG. FLAG makes war boring (not to say war is supposed to be exciting in a good way, but you get my point) This show fails to execute everything it sets out to do. I don't even know what country they were in and I don't care so they obviously failed to set the up the plot in such a way that I'd be interested. This only reviews the first disc (Good God there's more!?). I give this anime a score of 1.5/10. If you want to see a piece of film that best portrays the horrors of war (which FLAG tries to do) I reccomend Apocalypse Now. This film captures the essence of the Vietnam war (don't ask me how I know lol). Or if you want to see anime with great character conflict (which FLAG tries to do) then watch Elfen Lied, or Higurashi (aka When They Cry). I can sort of see why people would give this anime high-ish reviews; because of what it tries to do and tries to be. There is no show like it. It's one of a kind. Granted, it is a unique show and in a good way (theoretically). Unfortunately in my strong opinion which I will state as fact, it fails and somebody should remake it properly. It has potential, but that's about all it's got and did not deliver for me. I tend to be very critical so if you have second thoughts about my review, go ahead and give it a chance. Many people are happy with FLAG and you might be one of those people.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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