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Dragonar Academy: The Complete Series (anime review)

Posted by :Patches On : November 29, 2015
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Category: Reviews

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Dragonar-Academyreview provided by Andrew and Katie

Title: Dragonar Academy: The Complete Series

Director: Shunsuke Tada and Tomoyuki Kurokawa

Studio: C-Station

Author: Noboru Kimura

U.S. Distributor: Funimation Entertainment

U.S. Release Date: November 24, 2015

Format and Length: Blu-ray –DVD Combo Pac / 12 Episodes / 300 Minutes

Genre: Comedy, Fantasy, Fan Service, Harem, School Life, Ecchi

Industry Age Rating: 17 and up

Overall Personal Rating: D

Similar Series or Titles to Check Out: The Familiar of Zero

Synopsis:

Learning to ride and tame dragons comes easy to most students at Ansarivan Dragonar Academy.
Known by his fellow classmates as a “problem child”, hot tempered student Ash Blake is one of the only students who have yet to get his own dragon companion. Many of his fellow students also hate the fact he has a skill no one else has, the power to ride other’s dragons, any dragon. Poor Ash is the laughing stock at school because, despite his unfashionably large star-shaped brand that marks him as a future dragon master, he has nothing to show for it. His dragon has never appeared. However that day finally came, and Ash’s dragon awakes in full glory, but appears different than any dragon ever seen before—in the form of a beautiful girl! What’s worse, Ash soon discovers that this new dragon has attitude to spare, as she promptly informs him that she is the master, and he, the servant. Ash’s problems with dragon riding have only just begun.

Commentary:

Every once in a while an anime series comes along that looks like it’s going to be absolutely awesome. Then you watch it. Very few animes have disappointed more than Dragonar Academy. Two dimensional, excessively cliché characters, who do not know how to keep their clothes on, combined with lack of story and uninspired storytelling, and unfortunately, horribly excessive fan service (bordering on adult) combined to ruin a very promising premise. Anime is full of time honored clichés that never seem to disappear and Dragonar Academy is so packed full of them, it shows just how void this show is of any creativity or imagination. Giant bouncing breasts on all women characters, naked magic girls showing up from nowhere and mood swinging tsundere characters are ripe and abound in this series. It felt that it could not even do that right, not bringing anything original in, but more a copy/paste of many similar series that did equally as poorly.

There was hardly any plot in Dragonar Academy as it was abandoned, or completely sidetracked within the first three episodes. The premise behind it all was great but the execution was horrible. It seems as if they decided they could not fit everything from the source material into a twelve episode season, so they just did what they did. The characters were very boring and none seemed interesting in the least. None of them stood out from the others and made the series drag on.

I was also disappointed when I saw the dragons as I thought they would be more along the looks of a Chinese style dragon more instead of what was shown, which looks like a t-rex mated with a European style dragon and that was their kid. The dragons looked like a fantasy dragon with grossly exaggerated character designs. The dragons are also pushed into the background so that the fan service can take over the series. The rest of the art was okay but nothing special. The voice actors did a good job but I do not think anything could have made these characters interesting.

Extras:

Dragonar Academy: The Complete Series includes episode commentary, commercials, promotional videos, clean opening and closing animations, U.S. trailer, and Funimation Entertainment trailers as special features. This series was released with both English and Japanese with English subtitles as language options.

Overall Grade: D

Dragonar Academy was a letdown across the board. It had so much potential but they instead went the fan service way. I would recommend watching The Familiar of Zero or any other series like that instead of watching Dragonar Academy.

Psychic Detective Yakumo Complete Collection on Blu-ray

Posted by :Patches On : September 30, 2014
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Category: Reviews

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Psychic Detective Yakumo Title: Psychic Detective Yakumo: Complete Collection on Blu-ray

Director: Tomoyuki Kurokawa

Written By: Hiroyuki Kawasaki

Original Novel by: Manabu Kaminaga

Studio: Bee Train

U. S. Distributor: Sentai Filmworks, Section 23

U. S. Release Date: Sept. 30th 2014

Format: Blu-ray / 13 Episodes / 325 Minutes

Genre: Psychological Drama, Mystery, Detective Fiction, Romance

Age Rating: TV 14

Overall Personal Rating B

Synopsis:

Haruka Ozawa’s sophomore year is getting seriously scary. One of her friends is possessed, another has committed suicide, and Haruka could be next. She has a real talent for digging up secrets, but some killers won’t hesitate to kill again to keep those same secrets safely buried. So, how does Haruka get out of this potentially lethal dead end?

She’ll have to convince Yakumo Saito, an enigmatic student born with a mysterious red eye that allows him to see and communicate with the dead, to team up with her. Will Haruka be able to solve the ultimate in dead case files with Yakumo’s help? Or will they end up in cold storage themselves? They may just have a ghost of a chance.

Commentary:

Even though it has been almost a year and a half since Psychic Detective Yakumo was released in the U. S. inDVD format, it is good to see it coming back into the spotlight for the Blu-ray release. The series is a very special one because of the way it approaches the world the series is wrapped up in. It allows us to believe in things that typically scare us but in fact are not the source of despair that most ghost stories wan to lead you to believe. In fact it is the ghost that help solve the mystery and end up just being nothing more than souls that still had something to say.

I really like the way they portrayed Yakumo Saito. He comes across as a cold dejected person who does not care at all about the world around him but as we move through the series we begin to see just how connected and caring he really is. There are moments when I wanted him to show a little more emotion and maybe even give Haruka something that would help her bond better, but I guess that is part of the charm that is this somewhat dark series. I say somewhat dark because it is more of a mystery or deceptive series that a ghost or horror series. I can’t say so much for Haruka’s character. As much as I wanted to like her I just felt like she got in the way most of the time. I realize that she added some sexapeal, but this series didn’t need that. I do have to hand to the writers, they could have made her character to be a ditz but they did give her a relatively solid personality that could handle complex situations.

The plot of the series did drag a little at first but once it got moving everything began to fall in place and it ended up being somewhat of a solid storyline. The animation by Bee Train fit well with the subject matter my only issue is that Yakumo took on a rather stereotypical profile that made him end up being closer to L from death Note than a recluse who can see ghost. His quirky person worked well for a while but in the end it drug his character down just a little too much. I can’t say it was overwhelming but by making essentially a human with a lazy cats aloof personality didn’t play as well as it could have.

Overall Grade: B

Psychic Detective Yakumo is a solid detective mystery  series that will keep you watching. I know that the series was a live action TV show in 2006 ad I would have loved to see it broadcast. I’m sure it was well received. I also know that there are a series of light novels that preceded both the TV, anime and manga series. As a person who loves books I would like to read some of the novels, I’m sure that the characters are richer and much more fun to move through the stories with.

All-in-all I have to say that Psychic Detective Yakumo is a solid series that could have been great. It just lacked in character development and some relative basic styling. Other than that it was a genuinely entertaining series with plenty of drama and mystery to go around.