In a world of assassins and bounties, a world of an imprecise timeline where the old meets the new and where gigantic organizations control the fates of all, secrets are left to be unfold as the world is recreated for us, the viewers. Believable it may not be, but interesting it most certainly is…as long as you don’t take into consideration one small, yet important detail:
This is a Gonzo anime...
Not wanting to sound like I never gave this anime a fighting chance, I actually sat down to watch it with great hopes in mind and even the idea that this may be that second Gonzo masterpiece, alongside Last Exile, since the anime had been recommended to me. And for the first few episodes…it was good, I was pleased with what I was seeing.
The world of the anime is a wonderful joining between old fighting techniques and rituals and modern industry and technologies. I admit I always had an affinity for such worlds and this came up my alley quite nicely.
And thus, I gained hope for the anime, especially since the characters were so fine at the beginning (not original I assure you, but they were great). But all good things come to an early end, especially when we talk about this WONDERFUL studio named Gonzo. What seemed at the beginning to be a reinvention of the studio’s tried and, more often than not, missed formula managed to be nothing more than a shining example of that decaying formula. Nothing that was to be interesting managed to survive, nothing that was good about the characters remained, not even the production values weren’t even as high as I usually expect from these people…the anime is a cliché action series with little substance...unexpected, no?
The animation for starters seemed quite nice. And I do mean “seemed”.
Although the action scenes flow nicely, although the character models are nice and although the backgrounds are quite impressive at times…it’s not good.
Why’s that?
Because the color scheme used is little be said…AWFUL. It manages to ruin about everything nice in the anime’s presentation by the simple use of colors that are not what I could call pleasant to the eye. It’s an attempt at offering some style to the anime but it’s done so impossibly bad that it’s painful to watch as the play of shadow and light is desirable in any and all aspects.
And the animation kinda drags as it moves on…if the action scenes at the beginning are nice, as it moves on, they get to be uninteresting and boring, predictable and impossible (heh, not an argument really…who wants realism in anime?).
The sound on the other hand has been a treat from start to end…
The upbeat opening is what I couldn’t stomach…but the choral music from the anime was extremely sweet. Rarely was there bad music in a Gonzo show and this one is no exception to the rule.
The voices weren’t really something to remember; although the VAs tried their best to offer a thrilling experience…the end result is generic to say the least.
Ah, and the wonderful story that flops in each and every way imaginable.
Ok, as most Gonzo anime start out, we’re introduced into a world that is impressively built, ALWAYS after a change in that world’s structure, a change that affects the course of the anime’s story later on. Nothing bad thus far, it’s a cliché from the studio but I’m not one to mind such a thing, if done well. Superpowers and artifacts are introduced, a bit of feeling, some jokes, a few stereotypes and a bit of story…and this are as far as the first 5 or so episodes are concerned.
After a pretty good start, I actually found some hope for this anime…it was enjoyable the way it began and the story’s subtleties left little to be desired. A complex world was forming and the plot seemed to try and escalate.
Well, it screwed it up. After the introductions are over, the anime starts to drag on it’s already few jokes and bland action. The story and characters go from unique to villain hunting, time and time again, boring. More and more characters come in the lime light, only to leave just the same, leaving the viewer with the clear sensation of “What the fuck was that?!” Whilst I do appreciate large casts of characters, I do feel that the more the viewer can get attached to them, the better. But this is not the case in BC, simply because things come and go quite fast and there’s little on which to hang on and enjoy, taken even Train’s shifty moods.
The anime practically transforms itself into a chase series that’s pretty much predictable in the turns it’s about to take. Although the story does have a few shifts and turns, none of them come across as being quite unexpected, just attempts at breaking the monotony that affects the entire series. The ending is, for more than it deserves, predictable and stupid.
One element that stuck out like a sore thumb was the fact that a large chunk of the story’s drive was built on a character that is introduced out of the blue and the events that happen to said character trigger most of the main character’s emotional outburst and quite a bit of the series’ catalyst.
Still with me through this convoluted way of saying things? Good…
Well, what I found upsetting in the above was the fact that the whole thing was constructed very artificially for the plot’s sake but without the said character to have any noticeable role in the plot. There was no time for an emotional connection to be formed as to trigger such a development in the main character. It was, I repeat, artificial.
All in all, the story could have been good…it really could have been. But Gonzo’s cookie cutter ways of dealing with a plot development (almost never concentrating on some important elements but on meager things or fillers) killed it in its crib. Had the rest of the series been as dynamic and as engaging as the first 5 episodes, I really believe this series could have shined through.
As I’ve stated somewhere above, the characters undergo a transformation extremely stupid after the first five episodes. As the band of characters gets formed up, development ends and clichés take over.
Allow me to take Train for example. In the first episodes he is a cold blooded killer with some affection for cats and great assassin skills. After the first episodes he become an angsty teen much too talkative compared to how he was and extremely predictable in his actions. Such a transformation in just a short period of time made me believe I was watching a different anime than the one I began.
Sadly, no other characters are treated any differently. Very shallow evolutions and more often than not, very cliché personalities…I felt most of the times as if the producers were actually trying to destroy their characters in any ways imaginable (and I’m not referring to the action part of the anime). IF a character showed promise, it would be swept off the scene in just a matter of episodes; IF a character showed something interesting, his fate would’ve become as generic as possible.
Merry bands of merry characters in a merry little world, everybody fighting everybody else…that’s how I’d summarize the whole cast of characters from the anime.
Something I’ve found terribly amusing unfortunately and I’m still trying to understand why:
When one character switched sides…from bad to good (‘cause here bad and good are not blurred, they’re as clear as daylight), no matter how strong they were, they became losers of the highest caliber (take Train for just one example) and the very other way around. The more evil the character, the stronger he was and that’s simply retarded…too bad I’d say.
Gonzo pulled it out once again....another mediocre action-adventure anime based only on clichés and recycled ideas. It’s always a pity to feel that you’ve wasted 10 hours of your life on something so unrewarding in the end…
Oh well…on with the show…
