Review #116 – Saber Marionette R

Before this review goes on a few relevant points.  1) This review is a guest review done by Tenjobito, who you may remember from the joint reviews from last year;  Antispiral is a bit behind on reviews and asked me to help catch things up.  2) Despite the Saber Marionette series all tying together nominally, each part will be getting a seperate review.  This is thanks to each part largely standing alone in some ways, not to mention each featuring completely different voice actors, animators, and companies involved.  So reviewing them together really works poorly.

With that out of the way, on with Saber Marionette R!

• Published:  97 (JP),  98 (US)
• Episodes:  3

Junior, the heir of Romana, and his battle sabers Cherry and Lime, are enjoying their peaceful life in Romana.  Lime and Cherry are special battle sabers with Girl Circuits, special mechanisms that let them think and feel the same way humans can.  Suddenly, the evil Star-Face and his sexadolls attack Romana in order to take over so Star-Face can become the next High Official. In order to truly become the next High Official and ruler of Romana, he must first eliminate Junior. This begins a battle for, not only Junior’s life, but for all of Romana.

Supposedly taking place 200 years after the events of Saber Marionette J to X, there is really nothing to suggest this runty predecessor to the Saber Marionette series is tied into the rest in any meaningful way besides a few shared concepts;  The Mesopotamia is never mentioned, the other nations aren’t mentioned…  Even the fact that there must be females around now thanks to the rescuing of Lorelei in J never comes up, as we’re back to exclusively men that are clones.  The similarities themselves use different terminology too:  girl circuit instead of maiden circuit, battle saber instead of marionette.

So ultimately, with the fact that R was witten before any of the J series were, we’re left with what feels kind of like a pilot episode or beta to the much more popular predecessors.

How does the pilot hold up then?  Decent, I suppose.  It’s definitely more serious than the J series, with Star-Face and his sexadolls being truly cruel and humor being mostly absent.  The art is certainly closer to a more manga type style as well, with simpler rounder characters and more chibiness.  The story is simple to a fault to fit into three episodes, but even then there’s not much to say about it above the blurb from the start of the review;  One interesting twist that really isn’t all that interesting, but otherwise it’s just three episodes of Star-Face hunting Junior until Junior fights back.

Ultimately my impression of Saber Marionette R is forgettable.  The Saber Marionette setting is half about the unique setting, and R barely touches on that.  The other half was the core plots about the Mesopotamia and reprecusdions of the crash that reverberate throughout the J series.  And without those things, all we’re left with is a three episode assassination plot with an uninteresting main character, still irritating Lime and Cherry (even if they’re different), a cornilly evil villian (even if he’s more edgy), and none of the humor (even if it was flat).

So you take out the good from the Saber Marionette series and replace it with a pinch of drama and violence…  Frankly, it doesn’t work for me.  Still, it could be interesting to some as a stand alone movie of sorts, if you liked late 80’s/early 90’s low budget psuedo-scifi movies like Vampire Hunter D or Armitage Ill, though it’s definitely a step down from those too.

 

Review #115 – Saber Marionette J to X

Before this review goes on a few relevant points.  1) This review is a guest review done by Tenjobito, who you may remember from the joint reviews from last year;  Antispiral is a bit behind on reviews and asked me to help catch things up.  2) Despite the Saber Marionette series all tying together nominally, each part will be getting a seperate review.  This is thanks to each part largely standing alone in some ways, not to mention each featuring completely different voice actors, animators, and companies involved.  So reviewing them together really works poorly.

With that out of the way, on with Saber Marionette J to X!

• Published:  99 (JP), 03 (US)
• Episodes:  26

While Saber Marionette J Again follows on from Saber Marionette J, the events of J Again are more or less absent from the start of Saber Marionette J to X.

Instead, we once again find the peace of Terra 2 threated as Faust reappears, this time sending an army of attack drones to threaten Japoness.  Thus Otaru, Lime, Cherry, Bloodberry, and the tagging along Hanegata find themselves fighting against Faust’s own Marionettes.

But why has Faust given up his peaceful ways?  The plot only thickens as they find the answer to that question.  Soon secret agendas from the country of Xian embroil the group, and ultimately all of Terra 2, in their grasp.

Once again though, like J Again, the first thing one notices if starting J to X after the other two is we once again have a whole new art staff and voice acting crew.  ~Unlike~ J Again, however, this time it was unequivocally a downgrade this time.  I won’t mince words here;  The English dub of J to X is bad.  It is REALLY REALLY bad.  It is so bad that Antispiral literally could not bring ourselves finish the series without changing things over to Japanese plus subtitles. Those of you who follow this blog know how much Antispiral luts on watching dubs when availible, even if they’re subpar like Brain Powerd or Lost Universe’s were.  But this was so distracting, it made the series impossible to watch with any modecrem of seriousness.  Frankly, the animation at times was almost as bad, especially during action scenes, with distorted limbs or screwed up faces.

Still, let’s leave quality issues aside a moment.  The actual plot of J to X certainly is the most exansive of the three main Saber Marionette series;  With 26 episodes to work with and much less time devoted to establishing characters needed, the plot really does go places.  Starting in Japoness like the other two (thus the titles J and J Again, btw), things soon move to Xian in this one (thus J to X), where the meat of the plot takes place.

As to the quality of the plot here, I can’t say it’s much better or worse than the original J’s, probably not surprising since they at least had the same writer/creator.  So once again we have irritating characters, corny inexplicably evil villian, flat humor… But once again all the filler and nonsense actually kind of comes together in the end for a decent if not good climax.  Followed by a nonsense ending.

Honestly, even with the good parts to the story here I have an really hard time recommending Saber Marionette J to X to anyone, unless they really liked the original J and have to have more, but 6 episodes of J Again wasn’t cutting it.  Which is too bad in a way because it’s a touching little plot if you strip away all the nonsense.

But in the end JtoX takes a series already teetering on the edge between mediocre and all right and just dumps more of the same on so it starts getting old;  The same irritating characters, the same glaring plot holes, the same facepalming character actions, the same flat humor…  And then it tops it all off by the worst English dub in the history of forever.  And and, even if you wanted to listen to the Japanese audio to begin with, you still need to put up with the large step back in art quality.

Frankly, I don’t know what happened here;  Lack of skill, lack of budget, lack of time, lack of motivation… But whatever happened, Saber Marionette J to X is a mess, and I can’t recommend it.  It has almost nothing going for it, not even the things the previous two series had, apart from its unique setting and decent story.  It’s cheap if you’re desperate for more Saber Marionettes or can look past all the negatives for what little really good story there is at the core, just don’t be surprised if you leave more dissapointed than expected.

 

Review #114 – Saber Marionette J Again

Before this review goes on a few relevant points.  1) This review is a guest review done by Tenjobito, who you may remember from the joint reviews from last year;  Antispiral is a bit behind on reviews and asked me to help catch things up.  2) Despite the Saber Marionette series all tying together nominally, each part will be getting a seperate review.  This is thanks to each part largely standing alone in some ways, not to mention each featuring completely different voice actors, animators, and companies involved.  So reviewing them together really works poorly.

With that out of the way, on with Saber Marionette J Again!

• Published:  97 (JP), 01 (US)
• Episodes:  6

A direct sequel of sorts to Saber Marionette J, Saber Marionette J Again picks up after the end of the war.  A more contemplative Faust orders his three marionettes to stay in Japoness and learn manners and life skills from Otaru and his marionettes.  Otaru and his marionettes are now the heroes of Terra 2 for stopping the war and the Mesopotamia’s rain of destruction, as well as rescuing Lorelei.

Things have barely begun to settle in when a mysterious bandit starts plaguing Japoness.  When the marionettes look into it, they find the thief is also a marionette.  And not just any marionette, another one with a maiden circuit!  Not remembering anything except the sound of the sea they give this girl the name Marine and give her a home.

But who is Marine really, and why is there a seventh marionette with a maiden circuit?  This short OVA explores the story surrounding this mysterious marionette and her origins, as well as her purpose.

Right off the bat, the first thing one notices jumping from Saber Marionette J to J Again is the art and voice actors are all different;  Despite being created by the same person, the company that produced SMJ could not be convinced to to SMJA, so this happened.  It definitely took some getting used to going from one to the other.  Fortunately the art certainly isn’t any worse and might actually be a bit better.  The voice acting might err on the slightly worse side of things, but not by too much.

That out of the way SMJA, while taking place between J and JtoX, is really more of a short side story than anything else;  The plot and characters unique to this OVA aren’t brought up again in JtoX, so simply come and go over these quick six episodes.

For a large part though, J Again is an enjoyable little side trek.  The new character, Marine, slides seamlessly into the existing cast and offers an interesting story for the Saber Marionette universe.  The characters are just as irritating as they were in the original series, but if anything they might have more character growth in these six episodes than in all twenty-five of J.

What else is there to say really?  In some ways, I think I enjoyed J Again more than its predecessor;  Its improved visuals, compact story, and increased character growth were all refreshing after the sprawl that was J.  That said, it doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel for the series, and the new voices did little to help already irrtitating characters.  And the lack of tie ins and short length leave little room for something truly memorable.

Ultimately though, if you’re going through with getting Saber Marionette J, I think you should get J Again as well, if you can find it cheap or bundled together.  Even if it doesn’t really fix a somewhat mediocre series it does improve on some things and offers a well done little sequel of sorts.  If nothing else it was fun and offered some closure to some things from SMJ, so I definitely felt it was worth my time.

 

Review #113 – Saber Marionette J

Before this review goes on a few relevant points.  1) This review is a guest review done by Tenjobito, who you may remember from the joint reviews from last year;  Antispiral is a bit behind on reviews and asked me to help catch things up.  2) Despite the Saber Marionette series all tying together nominally, each part will be getting a seperate review.  This is thanks to each part largely standing alone in some ways, not to mention each featuring completely different voice actors, animators, and companies involved.  So reviewing them together really works poorly.

With that out of the way, on with Saber Marionette J!

• Published:  96 (JP), 01 (US)
• Episodes:  25

Some time in the late 22nd century, Earth developed the means to colonize other planets, building colony ships and sending them towards distant habitable planets.  One of these ships, the Mesopotamia, arrived at its destination only to suffer a serious catastrophe while still in orbit.  Almost all the colonists in stasis were killed, with the only known survivors being one woman still in stasis and seven men who crashed on the planet in an escape craft.

Unable to get back to the Mesopotamia, and without any women, the seven survivors see no choice but to use their scientific knowledge of cloning to inhabit the planet, each of the suvivors founding a country and making citizens containing their DNA…

Saber Marionette J starts some 300 years after this incident.  The seven nations of Terra 2 are thriving, each ruled by genetic duplicates of their founders, while the citizens are more diverse clones.  There are still only men though, and over time some of the roles of women have been taken over by robots in the forms of women called Marionettes.

In the nation of Japoness, our hero Otaru Mamiya is a simple labourer, peddling fish and living in a small one room apartment.  One day, after almost being run over by his friend, Mitsurugi Hanagata’s, car, Otaru gets into a fight with him in which Otaru falls into the river.  Washing up down stream near an old museum, Otaru decides to check it out, accidently stumbling on a strange marionette who calls herself Lime;  The strange part being that Lime acts nothing like a robot, expressing emotions and free will like a normal human.  Lime is soon joined by Cherry and Bloodberry, two other marionettes with this amazing ability to feel emotions, and all three resolve to move in with Otaru, whom they seem utterly devoted to.

The main bulk of the series is sparked when the neighbouring country of Gartland invades the country of Petersburg, setting its sights on Japoness next.  The ruler of Gartland, a man named Faust, seems to feel the world needs a strong leader, and has built up a large high tech army.  But in addition to his tanks and soldiers, he seems to possess three marionettes who can also experience emotion, due to something Faust calls a Maiden Circuit.

What exactly is the secret of the maiden circuits?  Why does Faust want to take over the world?  And what secret lies above Terra 2 in the wreck of the Mesopotamia?  These questions drive the plot towards an exciting conclusion, after some side plots and character building at least.

The Saber Marionette series is one of those seeming “classic” series from the anime boom in the late 80’s and early 90’s that we’d never gotten around to watching, much like Ranma 1/2, Project A-Ko, Sailor Moon, DNA^2, or etc.  And J has always been the flagship part of the series.

I went into J expecting a very similar experience to All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku crossed with Slayers, and in some ways I wasn’t too far off;  Like the aforementioned series, Saber Marionette J has a mix action and humor, all wrapped up in simple but colorful early 90’s style hand drawn animation.  Saber Marionette J does keep it’s unique style from its manga though, with its dramatic hairstyles and pronounced cheeks.

But what about how good it was though?  Well, SMJ is a mixed bag in the end;

PROS

• SMJ, while not exactly a visual feast, at least has clean charming art that fits the series aesthetics.
• The storyline, while starting weakly, does end up pretty interesting by the end.
• The setting and premise are interesting and unique

CONS

• Almost none of the characters are likeable;  Otaru is kind of a meathead, all three of the main marionettes are irritating in their own way, Hanegata is doubly irritating, and Faust is mockishly evil.  More than that they’re incredibly one dimensional, with only Faust and his three dolls truly ending up somewhere different.
• The story really does meander until the war, and the character growth and filler episodes just aren’t that entertaining, with little character growth and flat humor.
• The very ending is one of a few glaring plot holes and wtf moments that really take you out of the story and leave you scratching your head.

Ultimately, the goods and bads kind of reach an equilibrium with this series for me;  The characters are irritating enough, the plot holes are glaring enough, and the humor insipid enough to keep me from calling the series good… But I can’t deny the series at least possesses unique and charming qualities to it.

So would I recommend giving it a watch though?  Ultimately it really depends on how picky you are and how much time you have, because Saber Marionette J is more watchable as a cute, unique little piece of anime history than as a truly memorable good time.  It’s not bad, and it’s charming enough to be its cheap asking price.  But if your anime time is limited or you’re strict on anime quality, Saber Marionette J probably will seem like a waste of time in the end.