A DAY IN TOKYO - PART 5 - BURST ANGEL

Alrighty, here it is! After a couple weeks of waiting, I've finally gotten off my ass (Technically, got back on it?) and watched the last Anime I had planned for a review. This was probably the worst of all five of the Anime, being a little bit worse than Lucky Star. Anyway, after this post, I'll make a small Top 5 list of the Anime I watched; 1 being the best one, and 5 being the lowest. I can already tell you that Burst Angel is going to be 5.

An example of the beautiful setup and visuals.
The uses of colors in the whole series is
astounding for setting the mood. Props to Gonzo!

Not to start the review on a bad note though, because the show is definitely watchable! It's got the most Action of all five, so it's exciting, compared to the other four. It's also got the best animation of them all (Yep, BETTER than Desert Punk!), which definitely says something for it. But again, it's a fact of the matter that visuals mean far less than the story backing it up. I've watched about half the series now (About 11 or 12 episodes), and I can safely say that the series is likely to keep the same general formula by the end of it all.

The Anime revolves around a futuristic Tokyo, where a bill was recently passed by the Japanese government to allow any Average Joe to get a gun licence, and carry firearms with them. I'm not joking; the dumbass government actually did this, thinking that the citizen's self-awareness, wits, and better judgement would keep THEMSELVES safe. Why would the government do this? So that the cops could order an extra box of donuts, I guess? This premise of the setting still baffles me to this day. Japan must hate their country, in this age...

The main protagonists of the series are a "family" of girls that live in a giant van...tank...thing. Also, there's a personal chef named Kyohei that's a total wimp; he's funny though, so it's fine. Amy's the youngest; she's a dumb, whiny bitch of a kid. I seriously hate her. Then you get Meg, who's the tits of the group. Seriously, her tits are EXCESSIVE. No, they're not as big as Masane's, and no, not as implied as Junko's, but damn, so much cleavage and nipples THROUGH THE SHIRT. Was this necessary? Still, she's a dumb bitch like Amy, and is basically the "Daphne" of the group, always being captured by monsters and others.

See? N-I-P-P-L-E-S. It's so subtle and nobody in the show
even acknowledges it. Were all the animators just guys...?

Then you have Sei, who's the mom of the group. From what I can tell, she's trapping the fourth girl of the house, Jo, and using her superior combat skills to run their little band of mercenaries. Jo herself s probably the only tolerable one in the group of girls, seeing as she isn't a whiny bitch, dumb bitch, or just...A BITCH bitch. She's the anti-hero of the group, and she does whatever she wants to get her way (Kanta, minus the humor and in female form). Her and Kyohei are really the only main characters I've come to like in the series. And no, Meg's two "friends" don't count, in this case.

Anyway, in this series, the band of Mercenaries take on commissioned tasks to make money, live, pay bills, and pay for Kyohei's services, I guess? To be honest, I still see no CLEAR goal that the characters are heading for. For Lucky Star it works, because it's a Comedy and doesn't really need a storyline to be entertaining; what's an Action show without a plot? I'm halfway through the series, and even though there likely IS a plot hidden somewhere down the road, I don't care. It could be the most mind-blowingly amazing and breathtakingly spectacular plot in the world, but if it takes THIS LONG to get to the fucking point, then the writers should be slapped. Twice.

The music and voices are also a little unfitting. I'm usually not a huge stickler for this stuff, because frankly, I just appreciate all background noise! But this stuff is just unfitting; not bad or putrid, but it feels like the music should've been in a different anime. All of the music is so all-over-the-place. Take the theme song; it's some Korean rapping shit mixed with some R&B; it's actually surprisingly catchy! Then the soundtrack of the actual show starts playing, and you've got Electronic BGMs, stuff that sounds like it should be form Hell Girl, and just to be as fucking stupid as possible, Jo's theme is a Spanish Wanderer-like theme music. What the hell?

THIS IS TOKYO, NOT SPAIN.

Maybe I'm being picky, but is it so hard to find a composer who knows what the fuck he's doing. Lemme look up the composer, here...

...

Kyohei's face if he was facing Meg in the kitchen.

Well, would you look at that, the composer doesn't even have a Wikipedia page; it was deleted. That means that he SUCKS, since nobody seems to want to read about him. See for yourself! This even brings up another point: the latest episode I watched was the most confusing one yet. There's this police department that busted Jo for doing a job at some Wrestling federation and causing an uproar, so they take her in, but then she gets bailed out. Then the rest of the episode focuses on the Police Department trying to stop some other organization...or something?

Where the fuck did all of this new stuff come from? Is this the beginning of the plot? Why are they throwing so much shit at me ALL AT ONCE? Can't we spread this out for a few episodes, so that I can learn about who the hell all these people are? What? You're only making 24 episodes and have no more time to spend expanding?

Well, you should thought about that, at least, about...Hmmm... 

FIVE OR SIX EPISODES AGO, HM?

Alright, now that I'm done shitting on the show, and I've got my shield out to block against angry fan comments, let's get started on the good parts! Yes, there ARE some good parts to the show that actually make it redeem itself in little ways! Firstly, the animation is beautiful. I haven't seen ANY stock animation or resued sequences in the series yet, which shows that this is HAND-DRAWN ANIME; AKA, something you never see anymore. It's really nice to see such gorgeous visuals. The fact that it's always new frames of animation doesn't undermine the series either! The animators made sure it was still fast-paced and exciting in the action scenes; not a drop of laziness!

Yeah, you show that asshole who's boss!

Jo, being one of the only two characters I can tolerate in the show, is probably the single Anime character I've seen in a show that instantly made me realize she was gonna be my favorite. Her lone-wolf, cold attitude mixed with the confidence and headstrong qualities when she's in the heat of the fight makes her a really interesting character to watch transition from, "I'm walking down a hallway..." to, "I'M BLOWING THIS DEMON'S FUCKING BRAINS OUT!". Her alone, makes this series plain watchable; good or bad thing? You decide.

Meg, although she annoys the hell out of me, still intrigues me. There's an episode where she has to attend some rich-girl school undercover in order to complete one of the mercenary commissions, and lemme tell you, I figured that, by this episode, she was a lesbian. Now, if you're a guy, picture it for a second:

~ You have a 16 year-old girl with some serious tits.

~ 60% of her shots show nipples through her shirt, her in a short skirt, or her vaguely seeming to be masturbating; sometimes even a a bit of all three.

~ Said girl sleeps with another girl in a bed; upon the other girl putting her hand on Meg's face, she's red as a beet; multiple shots of the two in bed together are shown....

They're both naked? Under the same sheet? Which episode is this?! Plus, why do they pick NOW, of all times, not to give Meg nipples? Y'know, the time you'd EXPECT to see them...? Burst Angel's boob logic confuses me...

This was the one episode where I just found myself openly thinking, "Can one of you just get naked already?". Oddly enough, NOTHING ever happens (Hell, there was about 4 seconds of INCEST lesbianism in Witchblade...), but this episode will really make you wonder about Meg's sexual orientation, especially in a future episode when she's commenting on "hot guys". Is she Bi? Is she lesbian? Straight? I think Meg needs to make up her mind about she blushes at. Did I just point this all out as a good thing? Wow.

Yeah...Implied lesbianism, animation, and Jo are the only good things I can think that I found were good about the Anime; not exactly a great thing. It's not exactly as awesome as I thought it was gonna be. It only gets better after episode 5, but around episode 11 or 12, you just frustrated with that shitty police episode. It's no excuse, either, because Hell Girl took about seven or eight episodes to reveal a plot, but those episodes were taken to create a routine, and even that Anime was still pretty awesome. What makes Burst Angel REALLY fail where Hell Girl only sorta failed in pacing? 

The pacing was slow, and for no good reason. Literally, each episode has its own little subplot, and each subplot does NOTHING. There seems to be plot devices in the form of robotically-engineered brains (Sei seems to really want them; probably a plot twist somewhere along the way...), but I doubt the plot is even worth this torturous wait. I plan on finishing the series sometime down the road, but if it REALLY takes me half the series and a wordy, angrily negative review to get to that good part (Something I DIDN'T have to do for the others), then it's not even worth my fucking time.

If you're a REALLY patient and tolerant person, go ahead and watch it. If not, you may as well do something a little more pleasant and entertaining, like sweeping a beach widewalk.

~WILL