Review #54: Neo Ranga

Final Score – 6/10

The three Shimabara sisters live together alone in a small suburb of Tokyo. The oldest, Minami, is the surrogate mother of the three, the only one old enough to work (and she’ll do anything she can to get money). The middle girl is Ushio, an optimistic, upbeat high school student that believes that everyone has good in them and peace should always be given a chance. The youngest is Yuuhi, a shallow, selfish, spoiled elementary school girl that likes intimidating just as much as she likes manipulating others.

Their lives change entirely when a boy named Joel comes to visit from an island called Baru. He comes asking the sisters to travel with him to Baru, where they are now kings after the death of their older brother. Joel reveals his is their nephew, and that they are now the keepers of the god of Baru, Ranga. Ranga awakens, now called Neo Ranga, the God Reborn, and disappears into the sea. Soon after the three sisters return to their home, Neo Ranga appears and storms through Tokyo to find them and to be with them.

Neo Ranga is fairly well split into three parts. The first third is most reminiscent of a cross between Godzilla and a teenage coming of age anime as the three sisters explore their lives as they are, along with Ranga now. The middle of the series is more reminiscent of an anime like Blue Seed, where the heroes are divided and the world is shown to be in peril from those that claim to want to save it. The last part is most like Evangelion where Ranga must be piloted by the sisters against powerful alien creatures of immense powers.

On paper, the series holds a ton of promise. The idea is solid and original. Aesthetically, it holds even more, the openings and previews having a tribal, pacific islander feeling that few if anime have ever really pulled off. To be fair, those parts of the anime that invoke that feeling, as well as those parts that build off that unique and original idea, make the series. Ranga himself invokes that best, as well as the island of Baru.

Unfortunately, there is too much otherwise to make the series truly great, and some that even makes it a little bland. The sisters themselves develop as characters well enough, but lack real break out moments of epiphany. The series never really capitalizes on the primitive island feel that the music and such set a base line for, instead leaving a lot of the fighting and plot to more generic things that have been tried before by other anime, and better. Even the ending is a disappointment, leaving matters unanswered and unresolved, fighting the “final battle” in 5 minutes and then just fading out without much more.

It’s a real shame that I can only moderately recommend Neo Ranga, because it really IS so unique and flavorful in concept. Given the right production team and writer, it could have been a classic. As it stands, it was left with a core of interest surrounded by characters, settings, and plot lines that all feel a little boring and stale. If you can find it cheap or on a streaming site you subscribe to, the 48 episodes are all shorter than normal (seem to run about 12 minute each), so it doesn’t take that long, and it’s worth watching for what could have been, if nothing else.

• Languages – English/Japanese
• Episodes – 48
• Released – 98 (JP), 03 (US)

 

(Mega) Review #53: Slayers

 

Final (Aggregate) Score – 7/10

A Note to start: This review covers all 5 Slayers series: Slayers, Slayers Next, Slayers Try, Slayers Evolution, and Slayers Evolution R.

Slayers is set in a fantasy world ruled over by monsters and gods, a world where magic is both powerful and diverse, where humanity is joined by dragons, beastmen, and demons. The world of Slayers is vast, with vast reaches of territory left uninhabited, long forgotten, and unexplored.

In this vast open world, Lina Inverse is just one young woman, a teenager with a reputation as a bandit killer, a terror, and a flat chested little girl. Of course, she doesn’t appreciate ANY of those labels, just wishing she could be rich, have all the food she wanted, and keep getting more and more of both! Still, food can be expensive when your appetite is enough for a small army, and money isn’t exactly falling from the trees. Who would miss a few bandits, and who would mind if those bandits gave all their money to her?

Life could never be that simple though. Lina ends up accumulating quite a few hangers on, both with and against her. Her constant companion through thick and thin is Gourry, a dim witted swordsman that has inherited a family weapon called the Sword of Light, something that Lina really would prefer SHE had, so having Gourry follow her until he gives it to her. Along with him, Lina is followed by a man turned into rock chimera that wants to be human again (Zelgadis), a princess of one of the world’s largest nations that is obsessed with Justice (Amelia), and a mysterious priest that seems to always have a secret or two up his sleeve (Xellos). Each series has a main villain, and most add new friends and side characters, some that reappear later on.

As a series of some great length, Slayers forgoes the overarching storyline that some longer series favor, instead having a loosely connected series of jokes and funny situations that have general arcs with a lot of wandering as they go. There are plenty of serious moments in the series, but in general Slayers lives by its humor and slapstick. For every scene of someone being vaporized by a powerful demon or crying as their emotions are torn at, there are 20 scenes of someone surviving an explosion as a coughing charred pile or having their eyes burn with fires of passion. While Slayers’ serious parts are actually quite good, the serious lives and dies based on its humor. In general, it’s a level of humor that’s a little on the juvenile side, which is to be expected from the audience that the series is meant for. It’s light hearted, even at a lot of the “serious” parts, which leaves the series feeling slightly vapid.

The largest reason I only gave Slayers a 7 is because of that vapidness. More than one during my watching through the series, I found I needed to take a break from the series for a while, or falling asleep as I watched. For every well done joke or interesting spell battle, there are a good number of humorous times that just aren’t funny, and with over the course of 5 seasons, some of it just gets old. The action parts suffer just as much as the comedy, especially from what I call “Dragonball syndrome”. I don’t mean that the fights last 5 episodes with a lot of talking, but instead that there always seems to be a new more powerful enemy that the last ultimate attack doesn’t work against so they need a NEW ultimate attack, and so on.

I don’t necessarily scare people away though. For its fault, Slayers is STILL a classic for a reason. I recommend taking it one series at a time and taking breaks, rather than my “watch all of them in a row as fast as possible” approach. Standing alone series to series, the later Slayers series stand up better than the first two, but all of them have a quirky charm that few more modern series can match. Combined with the movies and OAV, Slayers as a whole is something that can last you months, entertaining (most) all of the way. If nothing else, you’ll end up feeling like you’ve been a part of a grand work.

Slayers – 26 episodes, 95 (JP) 96 (US)
Slayers Next – 26 episodes, 96 (JP) 99 (US)
Slayers Try – 26 episodes, 97 (JP) 00 (US)
Slayers Revolution – 13 episodes, 08 (JP), 10 (US)Slayers Evolution-R – 13 episodes, 09 (JP), 10 (US)