anime with supernatural elements: October 2006 Archives

I saw the first three episodes of "Death Note" and "D. Gray-man" last night. Hmm. "Death Note" is certainly very faithful to the manga.

Like I said before in an earlier review of the manga, "Death Note" has an interesting storyline and great art. The show also looks great. I like that the show uses a chorus as background music whenever the protoganist, Light Yagami, dispatches another criminal using a special notebook called the Death Note. It fits his God complex.

This straight-A student found the notebook lying on school grounds which actually belongs to a death god or Shinigami. Writing the name of a person in the Death Note while keeping their image in your mind causes that person to die. If you don't specify the cause of death, the person will die from a heart attack. There are other rules.

The original owner of the notebook is Ryuk, a Shinigami who dropped the Death Note in the human world because he was bored. Light is the only one who sees or hears Ryuk unless of course another human touches the Death Note.

Light thinks the world is rotten and starts killing off criminals. His plan is to create a utopia where he will rule as God. People call this killer of criminals, Kira. But the police and L, a secretive man who cracks unsolved cases, vow to capture Kira/Light. L narrows the search down to the Kanto region of Japan and convinces the international law enforcement community to make Japan the HQ of the task force.

But Light has an ace up his sleeve. The man leading the Japanese detectives is his father. The battle between L and Kira/Light commences.

I'm not so sure about "D. Gray-man" though and am wondering if I should continue watching. The show, which is based on a manga, tells the story of the exorcist Allen Walker whose deformed hand turns into a weapon that destroys Akuma. An Akuma is a weapon created by Walker's nemesis, the Millenium Earl from someone's soul and despair.

The Earl seeks to destroy mankind and also the substance known as Innocence which Walker and the other exorcists wield in their fight against him and his minions. Walker belongs to the Dark Religious Organization that was created to stop the Earl.

Somehow the show didn't wow me and I even found the funny moments strangely jarring. Maybe it will grow on me later on.

What would you do if you were born a spirit magnet? You not only see spirits, these disembodied beings also try to attach themselves to you. Some even try to attack you.

To Kimihiro Watanuki of "xxxholic", this is not a hypothetical scenario but a daily occurrence. The high school student often solves his problem by running away from them - literally. While fleeing one day, he happens to stumble and touch a fence. The spirit chasing him vanishes because the fence is actually a barrier.

He takes a peek and sees a house. His feet takes him of their own accord inside the place where he meets the beautiful space time witch Yuuko Ichihara. That's not her real name by the way, as she tells him later. This is her shop where she grants wishes for a price. He doesn't want to see spirits anymore and she has the ability to make that happen. So they make a deal and he becomes her cook/housecleaner/errand boy. He will work off the price of the wish.

But Yuuko's shop exposes Watanuki to more weird events and unusual companions. And he seems to be destined for something. As she said, there are no coincidences in this world just hitsuzen. The word has been translated to mean "inevitability".

The 24-episode series, which is based on a manga by CLAMP, aired its final episode Sept. 28 in Japan. FUNimation reportedly has picked it up for the U.S. market.

"xxxholic" deals with the supernatural hence stories about the consequences of wishing on a monkey's paw. The quality of the animation is inconsistent with three or four episodes looking quite ugly. The way the characters are drawn with elongated limbs and bodies in the manga doesn't translate so well in animation. There are some boring episodes I could have done without as well. And unlike the manga, no characters or events from "Tsubasa Chronicle" appear in the anime.

Watanuki for all his short temper and whining is a likeable character. He's an orphan who has learned to fend for himself at a young age. He hardly has any friends and the girl he likes seems to keep him at a friendly distance. He views another student, Doumeki Shizuka, as his rival and gets irritated with him easily. But the poker-faced Doumeki has the ability to repel spirits and shoot spirit arrows so Yuuko usually solicits his help to protect Watanuki.

As payment, Watanuki makes him lunches grudgingly. Doumeki also makes lunch requests which further annoys him.

I have no complaints on the latter half of the series. The story about Watanuki bonding with the lonely woman who lost a son is the basis for episodes 22 and 23. It is faithful to the manga and touching enough to make you reach for the tissue box. The barbarian who borrowed the tape with the last three episodes returned it this week to the anime store so I finally got to see it.

Suga Shikao's "19sai" which serves as the opening theme also grows on you. I have it playing on my MP3 player right now.

As you get in more involved with Anime you will find that hundreds of titles are released each year. You dig through the pile, watching the first couple of episodes to see which gets the ax.

If the title makes the cut, it will become one of your favorite shows, and you will stick with it until the end, no matter how many episodes you have to watch (One Piece, 279+ episodes, Naruto, 200+, Inuyasha 167). This is huge investment in terms of time and possibly money.

But sometimes you get tricked! At least I felt that way. You find a series that starts with a great premise, lots of action, interesting and unique characters. You watch the first episode and you are hooked! You impatiently wait for the second episode, and it's just as good. You can't wait for the third one, OMG, even better than the last two! It has become one of your favorites, and then...FLOP!

That was my relationship with Tsubasa Chronicle.

I fell in love with the series at first glance. The CLAMP characters looked like nothing I had seen before and together with the action sequences and the love story it was a powerful combo.

Then they added some Pokeman looking thing, which did NOTHING but 'look cute'. Everybody has to carry the freaking thing around even though it has huge feet.

Somehow I managed to get through this first hurdle. However I found it increasingly hard to watch and the story deteriorated into a 'lets see who they are going to fight in this episode".

I had to stop watching it.

From time to time I would read the reviews on the Internet forums. Most people still loved it. Others like me hated it. Still others watched because they had invested too much time to stop now.

I wondered if those people were still in their teens or just liked bad stories.

According to Anime News Network, cable channel Encore Action will be showing "Saiyuki Reload" starting Nov. 8 at midnight. The show is worth a peek.

"Saiyuki Reload" is the second installment of the popular "Saiyuki" series and both seasons are out on DVD. The third season, "Saiyuki Reload Gunlock" is sloowly coming out on DVD. I saw the third "Gunlock" DVD not too long ago.

The series is a very loose re-telling of the Chinese story, "Journey to the West". In this anime version, a monk and his three demon companions are heading west to find out why demons who used to live in harmony with humans in Shangri-La are now attacking and killing people. They're not going of their own accord but were ordered to do so by the Three Aspects of the Buddha.

Genjyo Sanzo is a blond high-ranking Buddhist monk who wields a revolver, smokes like a chimney, gambles and drinks. His traveling companions include Cho Hakkai who became a demon after killing 1,000 demons, Sha Gojyo a half-demon whose stepmother tried to kill him and Son Goku a monkey demon with enormous strength.

They haven't reached the West yet. And many of their adventures are one-off episodes.

The show's episodes can be pedestrian and the quality of the animation suffers in "Saiyuki Reload" but thankfully improves in "Gunlock."

"Saiyuki" and its two sequels remain a guilty pleasure for me. I watch it mostly for the interaction between the four main characters. The moody Sanzo usually smacks the bickering Goku and Gojyo with a big fan or shoots at them to make them shut up. He is not above threatening his companions with death either. Hakkai puts up with their slovenly habits and acts as a referee most of the time. He has his limits. But you know they care about each other. Well, maybe not.

It's not a show that makes you think about the nature of man or his place in the universe. So park your brain, take out that bowl of snacks and settle in for a fun ride with Master Sanzo and the gang. And try not to annoy him too much. He has a hair trigger temper and a faster trigger finger.

Can't wait to see the animated version of "Death Note" which aired Tuesday in Japan. That and "D. Gray-Man" which I also want to watch are part of the crop of new shows this fall. I'm crossing my fingers that both are faithful to their manga versions.

A fellow geek recently recommended the manga when I whined that I wanted a new series I could sink my teeth into. You know, something I would use more than two brain cells to read.

So I bought the first volume of "Death Note" and was blown away by the art. And the story is definitely interesting. To summarize, Light Yagami regularly brings home As, studies hard to get into college and is a model high school student. But he is bored out of his gourd. He finds a notebook called the Death Note which was purposely dropped in the human world by Ryuk, a bored Shinigami or death god.

If you write someone's name in this notebook, they die. But you have to know what the person looks like and how they spell their name. You can also write down the cause of death and even details on how this person dies. If you don't specify the cause of the death, the person just keels over from a heart attack.

There are other rules associated with the Death Note which Light later finds out.

Light decides to rid the world of crime by killing off criminals and plans to eventually rule over this utopia. The Internet denizens christen whoever is killing the crooks as "Kira". But the international law enforcement community isn't just going to sit back and let this vigilante be. They call in "L" who cracks unsolved cases but hides his face from the police he assists. The public becomes aware of their clash when "L" uses the media and a convicted man to test a theory.

On the strength of the first volume, I ran back to the store and bought the rest of the six volumes currently out. Hope I don't regret this later.

Vampires, ghosts and things that go bump in the night remain a staple of anime since there's always an audience for shows about the supernatural.

One that's readily available on DVD is "Requiem from the Darkness." Set in the end of the Edo period, Momosuke is a young man who wants to be a writer and travels collecting ghostly tales he hopes to include in a book called "100 Stories".

He meets Mataichi the Karmic Enforcer, Ogin the Puppeteer and Nagamimi the Bird Caller Mataichi is a short man sporting bandages, Ogin is a beautiful woman and Nagamimi is a huge man who towers over his companions. But there is more to this group than meets the eye. The trio actually rout out those who commit crimes and thought they got away with it. Judgement is pronounced on the sinner.

Momosuke becomes entangled with the trio and sometimes get in their way to his cost.

The show's look is unusual, almost stylized. Other characters are crudely rendered as if they don't matter. The settings and the backgounds get the same treatment too during the series giving the impression that Momosuke is in a nightmare world. And perhaps he is.

It's not meant to make you scream or shiver. And not all of the episodes are good but the series works for the most part. I don't think the opening and closing songs fit the show but that's just minor quibbling on my part.

The show deals with themes like incest, prostitution and torture. Definitely not for kids.