*snore*

This is where I look at a trio of summer ’11 anime that didn’t deserve their own individual posts.

Sacred Seven: The generic

Five years ago, when Tandouji was twelve, a horn grew out of his forehead and robots appeared. Plus, a mysterious girl entered his life and toyed with his feelings. It made Tandouji really mad and angsty. No? This is a different anime? About ugly monsters deriving powers from gemstones? That’s too bad.

Sacred Seven is as generic as they come. Brooding bad boy has amazing powers locked away inside him. He’s such a bad boy, he comes to class and moves his desk about a foot back. Oooh, I’m so not listening to your lesson plans today, Sensei~

Earth, Fire, Wind, Water… HEART!

Two girls take an interest in brooding bad boy anyway. One wants him to join her club, the other wants him to grope her stones and get all hard — y’know, hard armor around him?

Insert maids, a butler, a talking head, (shouldn’t this be a cute mascot of some unidentifiable species?) ugly, ugly designs and we’ve got a no-effort contribution from Sunrise ’cause they’re still busy with that other series.

I am slightly amused by the fact that all of Tandouji’s angst (“I don’t want this power!” ) conveniently goes away after midget girl gives him her stone. Other that that?

Ugly, ugly, ugly

Yawn.

* * *

Ikoku Meiro no Croisée: The mundane

In the late 19th century, a pervy old man kidnaps a Japanese loli back to France. She will make friends here despite being a stranger in a strange world. In the first episode, it seems like all she does is menial work for pennies (according to the pervy old man, she “eats like a bird” so she won’t be a burden to them at all!). That’s it — that’s the premise.

Let’s get the positives out of the way. Um… hmm, the French-inspired music is nice. The OP doesn’t grate on me. Hmmmmmm, I’ll get back to you on this.

Aw shit, it’s Hitler. Get him now!

Others might see this anime as a light-hearted fusion of two different cultures, French and Japanese. To me, the anime oscillates between boring and bizarre. Why would a random Japanese child want to uproot herself and live with a bunch of unfamiliar men in a foreign country? Yeah, I know the family sent her away to be a live-in maid, but Yune seems eager to serve. Why does Claude freak out when Yune bows to him? What — 19th century Europe has never seen a person fucking bow before?

The first episode nearly flat-lined me with its “plot.” Claude is a skilled artisan; he just repaired an elaborate lamp with a stained glass butterfly. When Yune notices a young French boy staring at her through the window, she clumsily knocks the lamp to the ground and the butterfly shatters. Yune then offers Claude one of her kimonos as penance for wasting his valuable time and labor. When Claude sells the kimono, pervy old man conveniently show up to tell him that the kimono was — DUN DUN DUN — a memento from Yune’s mother. This causes Claude to feel guilty so he and Yune bond when he bows to her at the end of the episode — what a concession!

Lady seems to have a growth on her cheek.

All the adults look relatively normal, but good lord, the children are peculiar-looking. I-I think I might have identified the problem:

Any way you cut it, Ikoku Meiro no Croisée looks to be one of those irritatingly mundane slice-of-life shows. Yune is too cute and simple to offer an interesting look at her new world. The anime doesn’t reveal the inner heart of the human condition or whatever, it’s just a cute Japanese girl in a cute (whitewashed) French world and… — wow, how completely vapid.

* * *

Blade: The ugly

I tend to enjoy Madhouse productions, but I have not liked a single one of these Marvel animes. Needless to say, I’m slightly annoyed by yet another Madhouse-Marvel collaboration. I don’t read comics. As a result, I don’t know a damn thing about Blade. Well, that’s not entirely true because I do vaguely remember the first Blade movie with Wesley Snipes. So yeah, I know he’s half-man, half-vampire and he hunts the bloodsucking creatures of the night. Other than that? Nothing — so let’s try to approach this anime with fresh eyes and an open mind.

What a bizarre set-up for the first episode, though. The anime opens with an attack on Blade’s mother, i.e. his creation myth. So after the OP plays, Blade stares at the night sky and the anime proceeds to show us, well, the events of the opening again — only this time with a few extra details. What a waste of time. Anyway, there’s a lot of “Blade moving towards the light” moments in the anime. In one example, doctors perform a c-section on his mother then holds the newborn Blade up to the light. We get it — he’s a good guy.

Ooh, he’s lying. I’m an expert on interrogations; trust me — I’ve played LA Noire. ;3

But anyway, vampire stories are always sexually-tinged and Blade, the anime, is no different. It isn’t a coincidence that the assault on Blade’s mother was treated like it was rape; whatever seemed to be invading her bloodstream (and thus the fetus’) looked conspicuously like sperm:

Nope, looks like innocent vampire juice to me!

I mean, hell, one of the screenshots above looks exactly like when sperm surrounds an egg for fertilization.

Later on in the anime, we visit a night club where the atmosphere appears almost trance-like. The onlookers, vampires as well, eye the dancing girls like meat. Iron bars suddenly appear around the girls and the men immediately turn on them — it’s like a veritable gangbang in the making. Unbeknownst to the vampires, one of the girls just so happens to be a vampire hunter in disguise. She proceeds to slaughter all the monsters in the club.

Superheroes are essentially vigilantes. Blade is avenging his mother’s rape; Makoto, female warrior, literally goes into the lion’s den to destroy the gang rapists in the name of girl power (unfortunately, she does literally say “GIRL POWER!”). It’s typical “eye for an eye” punishment when killing the vampires basically entails penetrating them against their will, either with Blade’s silver-edged sword and stakes or Makoto’s silver bullets.

Meet the villai– BWAHAHAHA, “build a diversified portfolio with E*TRADE!”

Oh yeah — that super powerful vampire that Blade was chasing at the end of the anime? Since he had a hand in creating Blade, he is Blade’s father for all intents and purposes.

GLISTENING PENISES

This is where readers balk and tell me that, sometimes, a bullet is just a bullet and not a glistening silver penis of vengeful fury. Suuuuure — now who’s the crazy one?

Anyway, I think I might follow this anime. Oh who am I kidding — I’d watch anything.