AniMayDay #4: Dragon Ball GT

Evan: For the last entry in AniMayday, Kit provides us with his mini-review of the infamous Dragonball Z sequel series, Dragonball GT.

I once heard a joke about Dragon Ball: “How many Dragon Ball characters does it take to screw in a light bulb?” Any guesses? “One. It just takes 40 episodes!”

This is only one of the reasons that Dragon Ball GT fails horribly. First off, the storyline is full of plot holes from the beginning. Why is there another set of Dragon Balls hidden inside the Lookout? Why were they never mentioned? Why does Emperor Pilaf of all people know they're there? Shouldn't Garlic Jr. have known about them and tried to get them back in Dragon Ball Z? Ugh ... my head hurts ...

Then we have to sit through 16 episodes of filler until we get to the first main arc. Which is against what you might ask? How about a villain that can regenerate and possess others bodies and abilities? And again you might be asking, “Wasn't that the Majin Buu arc?” Well, I thought the same thing.

It's at this point that DBGT really begins to crash and burn. The Baby Arc lasts for 24 episodes, of which only five minutes per episode are dedicated to fighting. The rest either revolves around talking about a strategy that doesn't work out or useless back-story that anyone who's watched any part of this series should already know.

The other 21 episodes are divided into two arcs: the Super 17 Arc that lasts 7 episodes and is the equivalent of a Bleach Filler Arc as far as story is concerned, and the Shadow Dragon Arc. In the latter, we get a long-winded explanation about the Dragon Balls containing positive and negative energy and we find out that when you make a good wish the negative energy increases to balance out the absence of positive energy that was used to make the wish. Then the balls each turn into dragons that want to rule the Earth ...

This doesn't even make sense! All the wishes that create the negative energy responsible for creating the dragons aren't “good” wishes. Wouldn't wishing for power be a selfish act, thereby releasing negative energy and allowing more positive energy into the ball to counteract it? Also, why is it that all of the wishes together didn't create the dragons? Why did only some wishes create dragons while others didn't?

Overall, there are way to many plot holes and not enough fighting to warrant watching DBGT. (Not to mention, this isn't even considered canon by most fans.)

Continue reading... | Write a comment

AniMayday #3: MD Geist

Today I contribute my own mini-review to AniMayday, our collection of bad anime reviews in celebration of the beginning of May. Get ready for ... MD Geist.

Ah, the legend. Quite possibly the worst-regarded production in anime history, MD Geist has actually become a cult classic simply for being so bad. The main reason why this hunk of turd is anything more than a footnote in American anime fandom is that John O'Donnell, founder of now-defunct anime distributor Central Park Media, had an unshakable love for Koichi Ohata's awful two-part OAV, and promoted the heck out of it in the early 1990s.

Despite Mr. O'Donnell's high praise, MD Geist a show that is literally awful in every single facet of its production. The first episode opens up on generic wasteland planet Jerra, upon which two armies are fighting about ... something. There's some sort of super-soldier dude codenamed "MD Geist" (for "Most Dangerous"), and he blows up a helicopter.

Before you even have time to register the cheesy text crawl opener, Geist has joined a gang of thugs and met up with some soldiers who need to destroy the supercomputer in their former capital, "Brain Palace." Why? Well of course, because the computer is about to activate a program called the "Death Force" that will wipe out all of humanity. Did I mention that the army actually wrote this program themselves?

Clunky animation and silly mech designs (shaped like winged football uniforms and giant horse penises) plague the show, while Geist himself — an almost completely mute killer devoid of emotion, personality, or motivation — proves himself more and more to be an utterly unlikable protagonist. Of course, MD Geist was graced with a classic CPM dub job, complete with lame pick-up lines, high-speed dialogue, and comically overemphasized line readings.

Worth watching with a group of friends, if only for its disregard for simple coherency and character motivation, MD Geist is truly one of the worst things I have ever seen put to film. Often bad anime can cause some raised eyebrows or disdainful chuckles from the viewer, but I can honestly say, without exaggeration, that I sat in front of the TV for the hour and a half of MD Geist and MD Geist: Death Force with my jaw completely agape, stunned by the cinematic atrocity being committed before my very eyes.

That said, MD Geist is now available on Hulu, absolutely for free! That's, like, a whole dollar more than you should probably pay for it, but it's all good.

Continue reading... | Write a comment

AniMayday #2: Girls Bravo

Evan: Oh man, this ship just keeps on sinking! For the second entry in AniMayday, our collection of bad anime reviews in celebration of the beginning of May, we've got Elliot's mini-review of the awful 2004 anime series Girls Bravo.

My pick for May Day is Girls Bravo — a truly wretched piece of dross. I was roped into watching this show when it was presented at a University Anime Club showing, with the chairwoman reassuring us that it was “a real cute show!” She even did a little joyous hop after saying “cute.”

She lied! This show was not cute at all, and instead was so terrible I had to leave the room for fear of having my mind rotted away. To sum up the show, it’s a harem comedy. Loser guy who looks like a girl goes to magical land full of nothing but women, meets a dumbass priestess lass and brings her back to the real world. Suddenly everyone in the show is after his junk and wacky hijinks ensue.

I honestly don't have anything against harem comedies — done well they can be really funny, and it is a shame that most examples of the genre, like this show, are lazily produced. The harem itself is full of forgettable interchangeable characters orbiting the most useless excuse for a person ever created. Every piece of lackluster comedy falls flat or comes off as creepy, as do the show's frequent ecchi elements, which feel forced and pandering to an embarrassing degree. You may have already seen the animated gif of the main heroine “taste-testing” a banana, which is so blatant in its pandering that you’ll want to bury your head in your hands.

Even together these elements would not normally be enough to make me run away from a social gathering, but the final straw is that the show is entirely without charm of any kind. Utterly devoid of any hint of love, warmth or thought in the final product, it is clear that the creators of Girls Bravo did not give a damn about what they were creating.

This show is a truly wretched piece of garbage you should stay away from as best you can.

Continue reading... | Write a comment

AniMayday! Celebrating spring the wrong way (#1: Chu-Bra!!)

Aside from Vampt Vo’s consistent anti-moé diatribes, everyone here at Ani-Gamers usually tends to review anime they like. After all, sharing the good stuff and making sure it gets around via positive reviews is half the fun! But today is May 1, 2010, and as much as there is inherent value in helping people find new series or movies to admire, the Ani-Gamers staff cannot overlook our equally pressing duty to help our readers avoid the unnecessary wastes of time, effort, and money we have come across in our individual explorations.

There are several countries that designate the first day of May, known as May Day, as a holiday devoted to the celebration of spring or end of winter (as well as various other causes), but the phrase “Mayday” was created to act as an unmistakable distress call that could be readily understood by any person within earshot. As winter has finally abated and the sunshine beckons us away from our DVD players and video portals, let us offer forth on this AniMayday a few rants about specific anime we have encountered that made us cry out in distress and tap out an S.O.S. via the remote control's Stop button.

Evan: These writeups are a little bit lengthy, so we'll be releasing them throughout the weekend. Tonight we begin with Ink's own mini-review of Chu-Bra!!

---

Rasputin believed that to be truly free from temptation, one must over-indulge in whatever sin it was that did the tempting. The notorious Mad Monk survived several attempts on his life, including stabbing, poison, firearms, more firearms, and clubbing, before he finally succumbed to exhaustion in icy waters and drowned. But whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? I don’t know anymore.

Chu-Bra!!, which I had the horror to experience over its 12-episode run on Crunchyroll.com, is a pedophile’s dream-come-true: a moé-driven series, pushup-padded with undeveloped, developing, and overly developed middle-school girls who either have a lingerie fetish or are sucked into the world of feminine underwear study by proxy of bra-and-panty aficionado, Nayu Hayama. Every episode revolves around Hayama and friends discussing underwear’s fit, form, or function; flashing their own and others’ unmentionables; as well as groping each other in some misguided and rarely effective attempt at humor. Any semblance of an interesting notion of plot or character (and there is at least one via Kiyono Amahara) is immediately tossed aside for a boob joke.

The only possible redemption for this complete waste of time lies in the vein of a fan service-laden after-school special that shows female viewers of similar ages how certain aspects of bras can lend to ergonomic comfort. I say this is the only saving grace, because reading too much into the “dispelling social stigmas concerning underthings” line the pedos will feed you is just another excuse to get this series onto DVD and released so they can buy it over the Internet and have it shipped to their houses in discreet, plain brown packaging. Also, do we need to have Amahara, who views lingerie as a sensual weapon used for influencing men, actually SUCCEED by becoming an underwear model? What messages are this series sending to the young girls who watch it? So avoid Chu-Bra!! at all costs ... unless you’re a pedophile. In which case, this anime might just be the knife, cyanide, pistol, club, and icy dip you need to exorcise the panty demon from your moé-driven mind.

Continue reading... | Write a comment