Tag: shonen longrunners

Beelzebub

What’s it about ?

The Demon Lord is too busy playing videogames and attending random parties to eradicate mankind, so he sends his infant son to do it in his place. The baby attaches himself to a brash high school delinquent. Hijinks ensue.

Characters

Oga, our protagonist. A top dog in his high school filled with delinquents, despite being only a freshman. The classic Jerk With A Heart Of Gold (c). Prone to semi-delusional epic narration. Having the same voice actor as TTGL‘s Kamina does wonders for his personality.

Beelzebub, the baby demon. You don’t want to make him cry, considering he zaps whoever’s around when that happens.

Furuichi, Oga’s sidekick. The poor dude’s chief role is to complain about the ludicrousness of the plot and get screwed over repeatedly by Oga.

Hildegarde, Beelzebub’s demon caretaker. After some over-the-top fighting to try and take Beelzebub back, she acknowledges that he’s attached himself to Oga and sticks around to supervise his upbringing as the scourge of mankind. Will not take “no” for an answer. Wonderfully deadpan. (… most of the time…)

Production Values

This looks perfectly alright for a gag series. Oga’s constant stream of scary faces has great comedic timing, and I like the occasional thicker lines around the characters. On the other hand, the soundtrack is terrible canned cheese.

The OP’s a joke that could get on my nerves after a while, and the ED’s just forgettable.

Overall Impression

This… is actually pretty funny. I was worried a bit at the beginning, as Beelzebub zapping punks was getting old after ten minutes, but it starts clicking after Hildegarde shows up. The banter between the three leads is delightful.

Now, with that said, do I see myself following this for 50+ episodes ? I fear the joke might stale after a while, and there’s a risk it’d devolve into generic fighting shonen crap. I’ll give it some more episodes, though.

via [In which I review] New anime, Winter 2010-2011 – Page 11.

Cardfight!! Vanguard

What’s it about ?

An informercial about a new cardgame.

No, seriously. There’s barely any plot to it, and it takes pains to explain in detail of this cardgame works and why it’s awesome.

Characters

Aichi, our wimpy protagonist. He never played the game before, but he’s still walking around with a full deck, including a super-rare Vanguard DoublePlusSuper card.

Morikawa, a stereotypical bully who steals the aforementioned card. Comes with two lackeys in tow (although one of them disappears halfway through the episode – continuity isn’t this series’ strong point). He immediately proceeds to lose it to…

Kai, the ace player from the local cardshop. He too comes with a lackey in tow, a blond dude whose main role is to talk smack. Anyway, he’s straight enough to allow Aichi a rematch to try and get his precious card back, even nicely explains the rules in minute detail for the newbie. It eventually comes out that they both know each other for some reason, although we don’t learn the details yet.

Production Values

Well, there’s only so many ways to make two dudes playing an effing card game exciting, so this series goes for the route of having Kai tell Aichi every other minute to “IMAGINE !” they’re having an epic fantasy battle and not just sitting around a table. But even those fantasy fights are cliché and boring, matching the triteness of everything else.

Overall Impression

During the whole “climactic” card fight sequence, there are regular side shots of the shop clerk barely looking up from her book to watch over those excited idiots. They stop short of having her actually roll her eyes, but just barely. This is the only character in this show I have any empathy for. (The ED suggests she’s joining the core cast travelling around the country or something, which makes my mind boggle.)

So yeah, this is despicable garbage trying to sell this crap collectible game to kids. It has no redeeming features whatsoever, it’s boring, it’s a transparent commercial, and everything there has been done better before. Oh, and it doesn’t even have a proper ending – it stops when Aichi draws his Blue-eyed White Dragon SuperDuperAwesome card (which Kai had helpfully lended to him as a handicap) ; that’s not a cliffhanger, it’s just running out of screentime…

Avoid at all costs. If you have any interest in this, go watch Yu-Gi-Oh instead, which at least has the novelty of cardgames on motorcycles (or something).

via [In which I review] New anime, Winter 2010-2011 – Page 9.