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Review: Comicloud, vol.1 no.1 (Digital Manga Anthology)

By on Friday, September 24th, 2010 | 1 Comment

Comicloud volume 1, no. 1

Medium: Digital Manga Anthology

Publisher: Bookloud

Release Date: July 28, 2010 (Worldwide)

Age Rating: Kindle marketplace link

I would not have known about the existence of the digital-only manga anthology Comicloud if not for @animeresearch on Twitter. So, all due respect to him for alerting me to it. Comicloud is published via the Amazon Kindle online marketplace, and as I have both an iPhone and an iPad with the Kindle application installed I was instantly curious.

First of all, I wanted to get all discussion of the application itself out of the way. Buying and downloading the eBook is seamless; the application takes you to the Kindle marketplace and back again straight away after a purchase. Downloading the book, even on multiple devices, is utterly painless. However, viewing the magazine itself has its issues — zooming into the pages is rather cumbersome and once zoomed in (especially on the iPad) you have to revert the page to its native size to turn the page. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that each page is shown at less than the full viewable area of your device so you get massive margins around each page.

Now, onto the anthology itself. The file size is rather dinky (9 MB, to be exact). While this is great for quick downloading on the move, the image quality suffers from this small size as zooming in even a little on the pages makes image compression readily visible. The size of the images that make up the anthology are rather small, resulting in massive margins around the pages on the iPad and noticeable amounts of unused space even on the smaller iPhone. This fact, combined with the previously mentioned issue of being unable to turn pages while zoomed in, makes reading the magazine a chore.

Another much more irritating issue is that both the translation and the editing feel lazy. The former is at least functional despite its poor use of punctuation, but the typesetting of the dialogue and sound effects feels very poorly handled and is detrimental to enjoyment of the magazine. All the text is presented plainly, sound effects outside of speech bubbles are untranslated and there is nothing to differentiate between sound effects and dialogue that are placed inside bubbles. The actual presentation of the content feels like an afterthought.

But what about this content then?

Quadrifoglio 2 (By Takeshi Okamoto)

The longest of the individual contributions, Quadriofoglio follows the genius mechanic Yotsuba (no relation to the adorable character from the manga of the same name) as she joins a university car racing club and helps out at her family garage. I must admit I had severe flashbacks to Initial D while reading this due to the very impressive, photo-realistic drawings of the cars, and thankfully the people didn’t look half bad either and were an engaging bunch to read about. The main problem I have with the series is a lack of any feeling of motion either within or between the separate panels, making it feel more like a series of stills than an ongoing, unfolding drama. In a manga about things that go “Vrooom!” around a track very fast this saps some of the fun out of it. Still, it’s a fun read and I would be I happy to see how it develops in further chapters. Searching for information of its predecessor (Quadrifoglio) has left me empty-handed, sadly.

The Most Important scene from Kurogane
Kurogane (By Nanami Shizika)

So, let me outline the premise here: loser guy meets hot dense girl out of nowhere and has to live with her, and she inexplicably likes him. If you just passed out as a result of how generic that sounds, then you know how I felt reading it. The series even ticks the additional otaku bait box of having a trap turn up in the first 10 pages. Sadly the clunky translation hurts this series, making the main expository pages of this chapter read like a garbled mess and so I’m not sure if the premise has anything going for it. The art looks serviceable enough (especially the breasts of the main female character), but in general the whole package is woefully forgettable. It does however have the best sound effect in the anthology: “Hug!!” Two exclamation marks! Wowzah.

The ugliest part of Nobuna-girl
Nobunagirl (By Taro Matsumoto)

Time for brutal honesty: Nobunagirl has terrible, awful art and is hard to take seriously. Both lineart and shading are all over the place and panels that should be badass inspire more laughter than awe. The plot jumps from a demon infested Warring States era featuring Oda Nobunaga into an even weirder sci-fi setting which has very little thought or care put into it. The last panel is so bizarre it has to be seen to be believed: a young girl riding on the back of a terribly drawn ripoff of the alien from … Alien (1979). I think I uttered “Are you serious?” while reading it. Skip this.

A panel from Kago Mania
Kago Mania (By Shintaro Kago)

For me, the promise of content from the surreal mind of Shintaro Kago (who is called a “fantastic idea cartoonist” in his own bio) was the “killer app” that pushed me over the edge when buying this anthology. Imagine my surprise when the content supplied had much higher quality drawings than his usual fare, but then also imagine my disappointment when I discovered that he had only four pages in the magazine! Each page is a single, full-page image of a surreal idea given flight, and while I enjoyed them, it was all over too soon. What a shame.

Overall, I feel conflicted about Comicloud. While I love the idea and dearly wish for it to find an audience, the content just isn’t there yet. Over half of the 80 pages delivered are skippable and the rest feel cheapened by the small image size and poor typesetting.

Personally I am looking forward to the next few issues to see how the magazine develops, and hope that the hard work and enthusiasm that the editors clearly have for their product pays off.

[Bad]


This review is based on the Kindle release, purchased by the reviewer.

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Review: Black Rock Shooter (Sub)

By on Friday, September 17th, 2010 | No Comments

Black Rock Shooter

Medium: OAV (50 Minutes)

Genres: Action, Drama, Fantasy

Director: Shinobu Yoshioka

Studio: Ordet

Release Date: July 24, 2010 (JPN, bundled with magazines)

Rated: Not Rated

Black Rock Shooter is a rather odd thing in this day and age. It is a 50-minute OAV, initially distributed with a selection of magazines based primarily off of a Vocaloid song created in response to a drawing of the same name. A real, live OAV in 2010! Is it the savior of anime? Is it going to blow everyone away, as the hype before release insisted? Well, no.

The narrative of the feature (from Shinobu Yoshioka and Haruhi Suzumiya author Nagaru Tanigawa) is split into two halves: one showing a mundane reality that provides the background and setup, and a second set in a bizarre other reality which shows the action and resolution as a result of the developing background. The two separate plotlines eventually resolve, providing the convergence point and the grand ending to the events at around the same time. If you have ever read Haruka Murakami’s Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World you will instantly recognize this structure. This can be very effective if pulled off well, as it keeps you invested in seeing how the separate worlds resolve, as well as seeing how they intersect.

In the case of Black Rock Shooter (or BRS, as it will now be known for the sake of brevity), this structure is a bit of a mixed bag. The animation’s two halves comprise an idyllic school day story on one hand and a fantastical action flick on the other. I went into this full well expecting to love the half made of bombastic crazy action and hate the flat school day crap but it soon turned out to be the exact opposite. The parts set in reality show a poignant, if slow to start, exploration of friendship and jealousy, while the action portion is a limp, boring attempt at being badass that forgets to engage the audience.

What is the cause of this discrepancy then? In short, it is the lackluster animation quality that persists throughout. More than once I checked the integrity of my copy to ensure I was not missing anything due to video/DVD player issues. While the individual frames look fine quite often it feels like frames are missing from the timeline, making the animation flow look cheap and nasty overall. This became obvious to me in one scene where the main character fumbles with a hot piece of toast fresh from the toaster. Both the toast and her hands teleport from one place to another in pursuit of each other; this made the scene look absurd and broke me out of the viewing experience. This issue exists throughout, though during the quieter and more measured slice-of-life segments it is much less of an issue due to the obvious lack of action. During the other half of the OAV, the supposedly action-packed half, the laziness in the animation really hurts the presentation. Action scenes appear poorly thought-out and lack any snap or pop in the proceedings — instead of drawing you in, the fight scenes leave you feeling like a bemused bystander watching something mildly bizarre happen, such as a pensioner dancing at the bus stop. Even things that should be bad-ass will leave you feeling nothing due to the cheap and distracting skips in animation, the Michael Bay-style camera angle shifts, and the slow pace of the action.

Something else that irked me about BRS was the music. In short, I can’t remember a single note of it. Every track is utterly forgettable and as soon as it stops playing you are left with nothing. For something born from the seething crazy morass of the Vocaloid fandom, surely they would be able to rope in some decent musical talent to bolster the soundtrack? Well, apparently not.

One last annoying thing, just to get it out of my system — the last scene of the OAV, the “stinger” if you will, is the same kind of inane cheap shot as was used in the closing scene of the US Godzilla film. I’m surprised a narrator didn’t suddenly burst in bellowing “Everything is safe now… Or is it? DUN DUN DUN” when this scene played out.

So, what did I actually like? Well, as mentioned before, I found myself enjoying the slower, school life half that was used for character setup. As it develops, this plotline begins to take on a very effective, melancholic feel that reminded me a great deal of 5 Centimeters Per Second and The Girl who Leapt Through Time. This was especially true in regards to the themes expressed, reflecting on the distance that can grow between people through the passage of time or inaction. The great shame of this is that as soon as it looks like the emotional storytelling is starting to get going, the two plot arcs converge, the story transitions to the other half you have seen play throughout the OAV, and the story ends. As blasphemous as this may sound, perhaps this film would have been better served with a strictly linear narrative, with the emotion-heavy first half able to carry to action-based second half.

Did I enjoy it? I suppose so, although I was dangerously close to shutting off the OAV multiple times due to sheer indifference at what was occurring. I almost wish that the crew behind the animation could be given a second go at making this product to do justice to all the hype and expectation, but that’s not how the world works. Would I watch a second episode? Sure. Would I watch this one again? Probably not.

[Passable]


This review is based on a DVD release, purchased by the reviewer.

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Ani-Gamers Podcast #033b – Daryl Talks Mass Effect (Part 2)

By on Sunday, September 12th, 2010 | 2 Comments

Garrus, THE BRO.

Hosts: Evan “Vampt Vo” Minto, Mitchell Dyer, Daryl Surat

Topic: Mass Effect 2 (2010) and expectations for Mass Effect 3

We’re back with more Mass Effect talk, this time with a discussion of Mass Effect 2 and 3 (which isn’t out yet, though that doesn’t stop us from spending a good portion of the episode on it). By the way, SPOILERS. Seriously, don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you’ve got something to say about Mass Effect or our opinions thereof, do let us know through the comments or e-mail.

Show notes and links will be posted after the break momentarily.

DIRECT DOWNLOAD – RSS Feed – iTunes – Send us Feedback! – More episodes

(Runtime: 1 hour, 5 minutes)

<!–



[00:00] Opening Song: “R.O.D. Theme” by Taku Iwasaki (Read Or Die OAV OP)

[00:15] Evan introduces Mitchy and Daryl before getting into the meat of the episode.

[01:13] What IS Mass Effect? We answer that question.

[02:47] Daryl and Evan provide some general opinions of Mass Effect 1. Also some discussion of the setting.

[11:17] Evan gets us into a discussion of the moral choices found frequently in the series.

[20:24] Uh oh, time to talk about Mass Effect’s infamous romances.

[32:55] We talk about the combat and inventory.

[39:25] Just some info for people looking for the second half of the episode.

[39:35] Ending Song: “WORLD END Instrumental” by FLOW (Code Geass R2 2nd OP)

–>

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Otakon 2010: Charles Dunbar's Amazing Anthropology

By on Saturday, September 11th, 2010 | No Comments

A slide on Yurei from Charles Dunbar's Anime Anthropology panel

It’s a testament to Charles “Anime Anthropologist” Dunbar’s dedication and tenacity that, despite abruptly truncated time slots, he keeps modifying, adding to, and spinning off panels that very adeptly guide listeners through general mythologies while connecting their more specific nuances to examples in modern culture. The two Dunbar panels I caught at Otakon 2010 — “Dead Like Us: Shinigami and the Japanese Idea of Death” and “Modern Mythology: Mythic Elements in Anime and Video Games” — exemplify this notion.

Both were in-depth panels that ran audiences through the historic mythos within Japanese culture and then applied these stories to examples within the modern media of anime and video games. Dunbar’s delivery brings with it a tone of exaltation that can only be found in someone who not only enjoys carrying around a basket filled with the fruits of his labors but in sharing those fruits with others. As enjoyable as they are informative, both “Shinigami” and “Modern Mythology” have so much to offer that summarizing them would be as insufficient as it would be insulting to the original content. Luckily, according to Charles himself, the panels will soon be posted on the website Weekend Nihonjin, which also offers links to his blog, Study of Anime, anime culture-related articles, and a schedule of forthcoming panels.

A slide on Yurei from Charles Dunbar's Anime Anthropology panel

Time allotment would perhaps be the only drawback to these panels (always leave them wanting more). At the con, Dunbar compensates for this by speaking very quickly but very clearly through the presentations to get as much information across as possible. This isn’t a bad thing, although anyone taking notes without an audio recorder, steno machine, or net/notebook will start a small brush fire with via pen-on-paper friction. As Dunbar is constantly researching and adding to his panels, he also compensates for time by … making more panels. Specifically, he moves general info to the more general panels while endowing more specific presentations with additional notions and examples. So next time you see any of the aforementioned panels or the name Charles Dunbar attached to a new one, check it out! Even if it’s on a topic you’ve caught before, there’s bound to be new, interesting, and entertaining examples for you to enjoy.


Click here for more of our Otakon 2010 coverage.

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Honoring Satoshi Kon: The Journey

By on Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 | 2 Comments

Satoshi Kon's masterpiece, Millennium Actress


Ani-Gamers is publishing a handful of messages from our bloggers expressing our personal reactions to the great loss that is the death of anime director Satoshi Kon. For the final installment, Evan remembers his experiences with his favorite Kon film.

Though many anime fans know Satoshi Kon for his more recent, more publicized works such as Paranoia Agent (2004) and Paprika (2006), the celebrated anime director has been my favorite since the credits rolled on one film: Millennium Actress (2001). The story of two documentary filmmakers’ quest to recount the life of an aging Japanese film actress struck me from the very first time I saw it, and its poignant ending now holds even more meaning to me in the wake of Kon’s untimely death.

When I first experienced Millennium Actress, I cried (a rare occurrence for me). Its structure leads up to an incredibly tense series of scenes so infused with emotion that even my reviewer’s mind couldn’t help but get caught up in the feeling of it all. I was so blown away with it that I purchased the first copy I could find and showed it to my family, friends, and high school anime club. In fact, during the four years of my tenure as president, the club showed the film every year, and I personally watch it at least once or twice a year. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, my favorite movie of all time.

Thinking back, though, the life and death of the main character, actress Chiyoko Fujiwara, is almost an accidental analogue to Kon’s. Kon’s career was also defined by spectacular, critically-acclaimed pieces that often told stories with similar, overarching themes. Both were deft at eliciting strong emotional reactions from their fans.

But the most heartbreaking connection comes in death. Both the fictional character and the real man died with only a small number of people around them, with their oncoming demise hidden away from the rest of the world. Nevertheless, they leave us with the understanding that it is often the journey, rather than the destination, that provides us with true happiness.

While Satoshi Kon may have left us, he also leaves us a number of monuments to remember his life by. Through them we must remember the man, through them we must honor the journey. With such thoughts in mind, there is surely no better memorial to Satoshi Kon than Millennium Actress.

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Honoring Satoshi Kon: A Shared Experience

By on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 | 5 Comments

The main cast of Satoshi Kon's Tokyo Godfathers


Ani-Gamers is be publishing a handful of messages from our bloggers expressing our personal reactions to the great loss that is the death of anime director Satoshi Kon. This time manga/game reviewer Elliot Page graces us with a Kon-related story from his university days.

I wanted to write about a way that Satoshi Kon affected my life for the better, and at the same time share my first experience watching his work. Thankfully these events are one and the same.

In my first term of university, I was confused and without direction. I had moved halfway across the country to undertake a course that was beginning to look terrifying and was almost completely alone except for a few rocky friendships I had made.

I attended the university anime club, with all its bizarre personalities and rather questionable programming decisions, and was on the verge of giving up on it (and anime as a whole, really) when one week I strolled in for “a very special presentation”.

That presentation was Satoshi Kon’s Tokyo Godfathers. I didn’t know then it was directed by him, and I didn’t even know the full title because the guy with the huge head who sat in the front row obscured the title.

The movie was wonderful. Utterly wonderful. I’ll save you the gushing attempt at a review and simply say the characters enraptured me completely and it had complete control of my heart-strings after five minutes.

Not everyone loved it. Some people, including the club chairman, left outright or started to gossip amongst themselves and were tersely asked to leave. One rather irritating specimen gave a theatrical yawn before strutting out, adding “Well, have fun kiddies!”

I don’t remember any of these people. I didn’t have much interaction with them in the anime club or outside of it.

The people I do remember were those who remained until the end of the film. Once the credits ended and the harsh, cheap lighting came back on I sat with a core contingent of survivors, most of whom I got to know over my time in the anime club and while I was at university in general.

Sat is the wrong word however — I was hunched over, sobbing like crazy. I cry easily at films, and Tokyo Godfathers did the emotional equivalent of running over my heart. To my left was a man who looked much like a bear due to his amazing beard — he was having a hard time holding back his own tears and give me a spare tissue. This dude became one of my best friends at university and we still stay in contact as best we can. To my right was someone gently patting my shoulder and managing to remain somewhat stoic, although she admitted later that she cried once she was out of sight of the congregation. We later entered into a rather rocky romantic relationship but remained good friends to this day. The rest of the room, approximately ten people, I became at least good acquaintances with over time. Perhaps we had undergone a shared experience, although no one ever pointed it out.

The president of the club came in, said “See you next week!”, and took her DVD player home. I came back the next week and the rest of my first two years of university, my faith in animation restored by the film. I made some solid friendships, some of which remain to this day and all of which helped me through the uncertain period while I was starting university.

Satoshi Kon made my life better, and for that I am eternally thankful.

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Honoring Satoshi Kon: What He Left Behind

By on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 | 2 Comments

Lil' Slugger from Kon's Paranoia Agent


Ani-Gamers will be publishing a handful of messages from our bloggers expressing our personal reactions to the great loss that is the death of anime director Satoshi Kon. We begin with a brief post from anime/game reviewer Ink.

Ultimately, the inherent value of artists is what they manage to leave behind in terms of creative output once they shed their respective mortal coils. From directing and writing stories to taking part in the animation thereof, surely something of Satoshi Kon’s struck a chord with my soul. If not, I wouldn’t own a copy of almost everything with which he’s been involved.

In honor of Kon’s passing, I watched the first four episodes of Paranoia Agent, a series that consistently stands out as one of the examples of anime I offer to any friend seeking segue into the world of Japanese animation. Kon’s ability to bridge genres lies in the fact that his work stands apart as potent film rather than frivolous serial. Even though Paranoia Agent is a series, it is structured via vignettes that showcase Kon’s ability to imbue disparate yet complete stories with a similar sense of desperation and resolution while collectively using them to build a complete statement on societal pressures and coping mechanisms. His feature-length animations — Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika — further justify the man’s proficiency as a writer/director by rivaling the complexities of plot and character found in most of today’s live action films.

His works are some of the most outstanding examples of what anime can be when not bowing to the lowest common denominator and serve as a bar over which future animators, writers, and directors should aspire to proudly vault.

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Ani-Gamers Podcast #033 – Daryl Talks Mass Effect (Part 1)

By on Saturday, August 28th, 2010 | 3 Comments

Liara T'Soni, a.k.a. the Space Autistic, a.k.a. the Space Asian

Hosts: Evan “Vampt Vo” Minto, Mitchell Dyer, Daryl Surat

Topic: Mass Effect 1 (Mass Effect 2 and our expectations for 3 are in part 2)

We’ve got Anime World Order’s Daryl Surat with us this episode to talk about the science-fiction action-RPG series Mass Effect. In part a, we talk about the first Mass Effect game (“Mass Effect 1″ for clarity), touching on the parts we both liked and didn’t like in both the storytelling and the gameplay. While I mentioned that the episode would have a lot of spoilers, this first part is relatively spoiler-free in terms of plot twists. However, we do discuss the meta-game a bit, so if you’d rather not know that, listen at your own risk.

Show notes and links are after the break.

DIRECT DOWNLOAD – RSS Feed – iTunes – Send us Feedback! – More episodes

(Runtime: 39 minutes)



[00:00] Opening Song: “R.O.D. Theme” by Taku Iwasaki (Read Or Die OAV OP)

[00:15] Evan introduces Mitchy and Daryl before getting into the meat of the episode.

[01:13] What IS Mass Effect? We answer that question.

[02:47] Daryl and Evan provide some general opinions of Mass Effect 1. Also some discussion of the setting.

[11:17] Evan gets us into a discussion of the moral choices found frequently in the series.

[20:24] Uh oh, time to talk about Mass Effect’s infamous romances.

[32:55] We talk about the combat and inventory.

[39:25] Just some info for people looking for the second half of the episode.

[39:35] Ending Song: “WORLD END Instrumental” by FLOW (Code Geass R2 2nd OP)

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Satoshi Kon dies of cancer at age 46 [EDIT 3]

By on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 | 1 Comment

Satoshi Kon, believed to have passed away today at age 47


EDIT 1: Former Otakon con chair Jim Vowles claims in a forum post that he has spoken to studio Madhouse’s founder/producer Masao Maruyama (a frequent guest at Otakon), who confirmed Kon’s death. According to the post, Kon died yesterday, though no mention of cancer is made. This certainly lends credence to the other stories we’ve been hearing, but I’ll stay on top of any further updates.


EDIT 2: Anime News Network has reported on Vowles’ confirmation, leading me to finally lay to rest my doubts about the death. Ani-Gamers will likely run coverage in the near future to pay tribute to the beloved, award-winning director.


EDIT 3: Anime News Network has published a letter from Kyōko Kon, Satoshi Kon’s widow, that was originally posted on the Madhouse web site. It confirms that Kon died of pancreatic cancer on August 24 at 6:20 a.m (Japan Time). He was 46 years old, not 47, as many reports — including ours — have stated.

We are currently hearing widespread, unconfirmed reports of the death of anime director Satoshi Kon (Millennium Actress, Paprika, Paranoia Agent). It all began with a Japanese tweet from Gainax producer Yasuhiro Takeda alleging that Kon had died today at age 47. From there, the rumor snowballed across Twitter in multiple languages, but due to the time difference between North America and Japan, there has been no official Japanese confirmation as of yet. Nevertheless, Anime culture researcher Alex Leavitt translated a tweet from Takeda that confirms his confidence in his prior statement and provides a possible cause of death (“Seems real, heard it was cancer”).

There is little that can be done now but wait for an official report out of Japan, but if this news turns out to be true, it represents a powerful blow to the anime industry. Rest assured, Ani-Gamers will keep on top of this emerging story and update this post as more information surfaces.

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Review: Hell Girl – Two Mirrors, Collection 1 (Sub)

By on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 | No Comments

Sentai Filmworks' release of Hell Girl: Two Mirrors, Part 1

Medium: TV Anime (26 episodes)

Genres: Drama, Horror, Supernatural

Sequel to: Hell Girl

Director: Takahiro Omori

Studio: Aniplex/Studio DEEN

Release Date: Oct. 7, 2006 – Apr. 6, 2007 (Japan), May 25, 2010 (Sentai Filmworks – N.America)

Rated: Not Rated

It is widely acknowledged that the death knell for a sitcom produced in the USA is the adoption of a new child character into the cast’s fold. Whatever season he/she pops into — reason be damned — is destined to be one of the show’s last. Although the tasty moral crimes committed consistently throughout Hell Girl in season one (and happily expected of season two) only served to make my inner beast spread its depraved smile, I cannot describe the surprise of absolute and gripping horror which arrested the very palpitations of my heart when I saw a new hell correspondent child, Kikuri, debut in Hell Girl: Two Mirrors (HGTM). But Hell Girl is not an American sitcom, and, let’s face it, little children are creepy. So I continued to chapter skip through the 13-episode offering despite hearing bells in the distant background.

Ignoring the ambiguity of said child’s presence, HGTM rolls along with the same premise instituted in the first season: people want revenge, go to a rumored website, and summon the hell correspondents to get rid of the antagonist. Unfortunately, the latter happens all too hastily and almost entirely without the surrealist imagination of the first series. Then the protagonists get a nifty tattoo to show that they are damned to hell for their decisive actions over which they’ve anguished. My main issue with season one was that the formula used in episode after episode — people pushed to the brink of sanity, upon which ledge they damn their tormentors and selves to hell — only began to be played with in terms of sequence and morality towards the very end of the series. HGTM definitely continues to play with sequencing and morality, but most of the time the attempts are gratuitous or superfluous.

This time-trickery also does something far more detrimental to the series — it takes away the building of truly tormented characters that made the first season so much fun to watch and justified viewer sympathy. Of course the reason behind not getting to know many of the episodic characters in the first 13 stories of HGTM is to showcase their unjust or frivolous use of the hell correspondents. Such are the protagonists’ motivations that, in the end, most feel totally unidentifiable or unsympathetic (sometimes more sympathy is felt for the hell correspondents for having to put up with such summoners, which is more the point). Maybe this is karmic retribution for their taking more active roles in season two (CSI: Hell on Earth) versus their behind-the-scenes role as divine sword of justice from season one, but either way the hell correspondents remain flat despite their foray into the spotlight, which only serves to make their attempted breakthrough naught but arduous viewing that detracts from the vignettes which make the series.

FUNimation picked up the original Hell Girl, and its failure to pick up the second season might be saying something. It definitely says there’s no dub support — a shame given the great dub of the first season. The Japanese voice cast is fantastic though, so there are no real audio drawbacks, and the background music is as divinely chosen as ever. Also, the original season one DVD releases came with a bunch of cool extras, including some live-action Hell Girl re-imaginings, but Sentai Filmworks’ Two Mirrors discs offer only the standard trailers and opening/closing credit options, an unfortunate choice given the new direction this season is obviously taking. Would director interviews or commentary really be too much to ask?

Overall, I’d have to say this is worth checking out from Netflix or streaming. If nothing else, it highlights the merits of the original series by comparison and just might have something good going for itself somewhere further down the line.

[Recommended]


This review is based on the Sentai Filmworks DVD release of the series, purchased by the reviewer.

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