Yuki Kaji – Media In Review

GANTZ: O

DIRECTED BY: Yasushi Kawamura

STARRING: Daisuke Ono, M·A·O, Tomohiro Kaku, Saori Hayami, Shūichi Ikeda, Masane Tsukayama, Yūki Kaji

GENRE: Science Fiction, Action

YEAR: 2016

COUNTRY: Japan

While fighting invading monsters, Kei Kurono rescues his friend, Reika. Though she protests, he faces off against the monsters’ leader, dying just after killing it. Reika and her surviving teammates are teleported back to their base. Elsewhere, Masaru Kato dies after attempting to save someone from a knife-wielding maniac in a subway (who seems to be indiscriminately killing innocent bystanders). He wakes up in a small room with Reika and her teammates: Yoshikazu Suzuki, an old man; Joichiro Nishi, a surly teenager; and an angry, unidentified man. Suzuki explains that, in the past, they have each died and woken in the room. They are subsequently forced to fight against waves of monsters. Before Suzuki can explain further, a black orb identified as “Gantz” announces that their next mission is about to begin. The angry man defiantly refuses to participate and is killed by Nishi, who reasons that the rebelling man will be nothing but a liability.

Alright Gantz:0, what do have in store for me? While I am not too familiar with the Gantz franchise, as it has been almost a decade since I have seen the original series, but I felt Gantz:0 actually found itself a place in this gory/bloody franchise. By far the best part of Gantz:0 was the design of the enemies. They were weird, surreal, and equally terrifying to the point of pure amazement. For example, when the boss arrives in his final form, he intrigues me at the same time of horrifying me beyond belief. Now that I think of it though, it seems loosely influenced by the Summoned Skull monster from the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise, just 10 times more bad ass.

However, beyond the monster design, nothing really stood out to me at least in a positive light. The CGI animation, while showcasing the advances we have made in the following years, it made the human characters seem bland and unimportant. While this does provide the illusion that they are just soldiers, not unique in any way, but that also takes away what little character development there is. Continuing with character faults, the voice acting is also rather poor, this story should have just been left subtitled.

PROS:

Character design.
Score.

CONS:

Poor cast performance.
Awkward CGI animation.
Bland character design.
Pacing.

SCORE: 4.5 / 10

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For this week’s anime club, we dive right back into the world of Blue Exorcist for Blue Exorcist: The Movie.

BLUE EXORCIST: THE MOVIE

DIRECTED BY: Atsushi Takahashi

STARRING: Nobuhiko Okamoto, Jun Fukuyama, Kana Hanazawa, Kazuya Nakai, Koji Yusa, Yuki Kaji

GENRE: Supernatural, Action

YEAR: 2012

COUNTRY: Japan

Rin and his friends, along with the rest of True Cross Academy Town, are in the midst of preparing for a festival that is celebrated only once every 11 years. While the barriers protecting the city from demon intrusions are being repaired, Rin and his twin brother Yukio are sent to the scene of an exorcism as reinforcements. Things take a turn for the worse and as they attempt to salvage their mission, they meet a mysterious young boy that may threaten everything that they know. Meanwhile, Cheng-Long Liu, a First Class Senior Exorcist from the Taiwan Branch, joins the ‘simple’ repair operation that forces his fate to cross with ‘Satan’s spawn’, Rin.

As for the movie, it blasts off in full action mode with no time wasted. In fact, the premise immediately comes to fruition with the Phantom Train. The ride is a tough one though for Rin and the others especially since it’s not like anything they’ve faced before. Luckily, we can see that Rin and his abilities has not gone to stale and is able to fight effectively alongside his brother Yukio. The movie itself is also pretty straightforward. What you see is what you get a – fun supernatural ride, or at least in the beginning. The setting still takes place in the same place as the original series so don’t expect any certain twists in terms of the location.

Most of the main characters makes their appearances in this movie including the shy Shiemi, the confident Yukio, the hot-headed Shura, the stubborn Izumo, the wise head Konekomaru, the prodigy Bon, flamboyant Mephisto, easy going Shima, and among others. Even a familiar demon makes his cameo. One new character viewers might not be familiar with though is Usamaro, a strange kid with a pair of ears and curiosity. Voiced by the famous Kugimiya Rie, aka the queen of tsundere, she plays the role of this character. However, the kid has some secrets than meets more than the eye.

If there is anything that The Movie could have done to make itself much better, it would be the character development. It’s a shame how the new character Cheng-Long Liu did not get any form of characterization and ends up being a typical supporting figure. And, as decent as the movie is, it’s nothing more than an extension of the main series rather than a continuation so viewers don’t really stand to miss out on a lot of detail if they had followed the main storyline. But with a short 90-minute timespan, viewers can simply treat this as a good way to kill some time.

PROS: