[Aiko]

(Original post by Mono)
I'm on it Aiko though I'd have to type 24/7 to keep up with AJ

Aha, definitely. Similarly, I should try to write something, even if it's brief. I suspect, with many of the currently airing anime coming to an end, I can write about those. Nice review of Elfen Lied.

[AngryJellyfish]

Kemono no Souja Erin:

PLOT: Erin is a 10 year old girl, who lives with her mother Soyon in a small village. Soyon's job is to raise and look after Touda, which are big lizards used by the country's army. Erin is naturally curious and full of questions about everything, and having been brought up watching her mother at work, she is particularly interested in the Touda, which she finds cute. But for some reason Soyon isn't as happy with her job, often looking sad when dealing with the creatures. She isn't keen on her daughter following the same path she did either, and tries her best to convince Erin that Touda are wild animals, and potentially very dangerous. The series follows Erin as she grows up, learning more about Touda and another type of wild beast known as the Ohju, and their interactions with humans.

Soyon has green eyes and green hair, and is from the Ariyo race, or 'Mist People' as they are known to others. Erin is only half Ariyo - her mother left her people after meeting Erin's late father, who was the son of the chief of the village where they now live - but even so she still has the green eyes. Because the Mist People aren't trusted by the other people of the country, who believe they have weird and creepy powers, Erin and Soyon are treated as outsiders in the village, even as family members of the chief. This prejudice is made quite clear early on in the series, and is pretty important later on.

Erin's life isn't all that the series focuses on, however. Politics plays a huge part, as the country is effectively beginning to split into two factions: the Shin Oh region where the Queen resides, a wealthy and peaceful area of the country where people hate the idea of war; and the Tai-Koh region watched over by the Grand Duke, whose men and large Touda armies protect the country from invasion, but who are looked down upon despite their great sacrifices. As the series progresses and Erin gets older, she is increasingly drawn into these affairs, when all she wants to do is look after animals. Most of the human characters are easy to split into categories such as 'obviously good' and 'obviously evil'. This meant that a lot of the time it was easy to predict the direction things were going to take plot-wise, a minor complaint I had with the series throughout. But the wild beasts are just that - wild and unpredictable. The Ohju in particular provided some of the more shocking, unexpected plot developments, simply because the smallest things can cause panic and instincts to take over. And those things are HUGE. Those moments more than made up for the more predictable 'plot twists'.

The series was pretty slow paced, but this worked well. We got to see Erin slowly learn about the Touda and Ohju on the one side, and watch the state of the country slowly deteriorate on the other. But in order for things to progress, time obviously had to pass, so there were a couple of 4 year time skips. Both of these was preceded by a recap episode, so when the second one came up I already had an idea what was coming next. As much as I dislike recap eps when I'm marathoning anime, as I only watched most of the things being covered a day or two beforehand, I thought placing them there was a pretty good idea.

MUSIC AND ANIMATION: Music was strongly present throughout this series. As well as the awesome first OP and both of the EDs, every episode featured at least one of 5-6 different insert songs, and I loved them all. There was a second OP, but it was just a badly sung (IMO) version of the first one, which was about the only music in the show I didn't like. The general BGM was also great; I think I want the soundtrack for this show! Lastly, the harp is played quite a lot throughout the series and becomes important to the plot later on, which suited me just fine.

Kemono no Souja Erin shares both it's original creator and it's animation studio with Seirei no Moribito, which had a fairly realistic animation style and breathtakingly good backgrounds. This series had a very simple animation style in comparison, but it was no less interesting or effective. The buildings had soft edges, the clouds looked lovely (Production I.G do like their clouds...), and in certain situations (e.g. when a huge Touda battle occurred, or when an old legend was being told) the animation style would change completely to increase the effect. No complaints here either.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: I feel I've kept to the facts more than I usually do when talking about the plot, as opposed to my feelings about it, because all the best parts of this anime are definitely spoilers. So I'll just come out and say it now: this series is a masterpiece. 5/5.

[AngryJellyfish]

Ray The Animation:

PLOT: The main character, Ray, was brought up in a weird institute where children's organs are sold for huge prices. Ray herself ends up losing her eyes, but is later rescued. She is then given new eyes by Black Jack (yes, THE Black Jack), but these are no ordinary eyes. They give her the ability to see through anything she wants to - walls, skin, clothes, whatever. I can think of hundreds of different ways this could be used, some '', some '', others mostly '', but Ray chooses to become an epic surgeon, using her vision to look into people's bodies and identify the causes of whatever illness that week's episode throws at her. She has some pretty awesome skills with a scalpel too, but I think that's just her natural ability. Oh, and all the nurses in the hospital are martial artists. And the director is a one-eyed, peg-legged beardy pirate man who repels boarders beats people up by spinning like a Beyblade. In summary, the world of Ray the Animation doesn't seem to be a bad place to fall ill, as you'll be in VERY safe hands.

Actually, forget that. It isn't a good place to fall ill, because the illnesses they have to deal with are FREAKING WEIRD. While at the start of the series they're dealing with diseases that aren't TOO much of a stretch of medical and biological science (especially if you've already accepted the protagonist having X-Ray vision), they get stranger and stranger with every episode. Some were sickening, others were just hilarious. All in all it made for very entertaining viewing, though often for the wrong reasons.

But of course, the show also has a larger mystery and plot behind everything - the evil organisation that sells children's organs. There are two people in particular from her past that Ray is determined to find for different reasons: Koichi, another child who was her closest friend when she was in the institute, and a person only known as the 'H-Ring Man' (because he wears a ring with a H on it), who was in charge of the organisation. As the series progresses, we learn small amounts about both these characters, but the majority is kept back until the final few episodes when all is revealed. The plot made sense and was pretty unique, I'll give it that, but it was a bit underwhelming compared to the episodic medical monstrosities that made up the first half of the series. H-ring guy in particular was NOT what I was expecting - they built him up to be a generic bad guy, but when they revealed his motives... simple, pathetic, VERY creepy, but also very human.

MUSIC AND ANIMATION: The BGM was very cheesy. OP and ED were odd, but marathoned this over the past couple of days, rarely skipped the themes, and don't remember either, so clearly they didn't leave much of an impression.

The animation wasn't bad for the mid 2000's, but I've seen better - I've always thought of OLM Inc. as being middle of the road, and Ray the Animation is no exception.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: For the most part, this series is hilariously bad. Then it tries to become serious towards the end, and while the plot isn't bad, it was difficult for me to take anything seriously by that point, I just wanted them to come up with a new super disease. Definitely some comedic value, but overall a 2.5/5.