| about
trismugistus.com
and digital-bondage.net
are my web sites.
trismugistus.com
is where I upload my anime, manga and tv&film reviews,
and also where I occasionally post short stories and longer
works I've written.
digital-bondage.net
is my wallpaper site and provides anime, manga and other
desktop wallpapers in a variety of resolutions. I also
have a few tutorials and some resources, such as psds
for you to download.
I also run a site called scan-city.org,
which provides scans from the latest japanese anime magazines
for you to download and use in your wallpapers.
You can also read my blog here
or check out my anime list here. |
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|
| bakuretsu tenshi (burst
angel) review |
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| details |
| The Genre: sci-fi |
| The Format: 24 eps on 6 DVDs from funimation |
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| The plot: In a crime ridden future, the streets
of Tokyo are patrolled by RAPT, the organization
responsible for maintaining peace and order. In
this bleak world the citizenry are legallly allowed
to carry and wield firearms. But so are the criminals.
It is RAPT's purpose to dispense quick justice on
those that would violate or abuse the law.
But buried deep underground in secret labs, monsters
of unimaginable terror are being forged using a
new science, having their organic cells fused with
machine parts creating the perfect enforcers to
endure a future devoid of free will.
In response to the rising threat, four brave angels
assume the responsibility to defend the defenseless
and bring down the underground crim syndicates,
as well as the corrupt leaders of RAPT. They are
enigmas, but Jo, Sei, Amy, and Meg, are the best
change a wounded city has of freeing itself from
an even darker future. |
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| back
to top |
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| opinion
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| It took me a while to get BakuTen.
I must admit it was a show that I came to with
a lot of preconcpetions about what it would both
be about and how it would be done. This isn’t
an ideal thing to do, of course, because it means
there’s an almost 100% certainty that it wasn’t
going to match what I had in my head. |
A lot of my expectations were based on
the artwork. Character design in BakuTen is
by Ugetsu Hakua, and he has a very distinct
artistic style – his work lacks the
normal sense of cuteness you get in a lot
of anime, but it isn’t a realistic style
either. It’s difficult to explain, but
it’s got a lot in common with range
murata – there’s a heavy blending
of realism in with what are clearly fantastical
images.
These images, combined with the title (Burst
Angel) lead me to believe that the show was
going to have a dark underbelly. That it would
have a surface sheen of normal anime hi-jinks,
but underlying this would be a complex, twisted
tale, that, given the “angel”
in the title and the use of crosses on characters
clothes, would be somethign about heave, or,
indeed hell.
In other words, I thought it might be a lot
like eva. There are even some big, ass-kicking,
gun-totting mecha kicking about in the show,
so how could I possibly be wrong? |
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Well, I was wrong. Very wrong. BakuTen has absolutely
nothing to do with religion or christianity in any
sense. In fact, a better feel for what baku ten
is all about can be had from the more obvious elements
of the character design – the wild west theme.
And this is where we get to the part about not
really getting BakuTen initially. BakuTen is by
Gonzo. I tend to think of Gonzo as being one of
the most west-sensitive of the anime studios.
Also, where a studio like Gainax always seems to
set out to make the best show they possibly can,
and then they see how they can make money out of
it, Gonzo shows tend to be the reverse of this.
They always seem to me to be driven towards making
something that will sell a lot of DVDs and toys,
and if you get a good story in there too, it’s
entirely a bonus. |
 |
As such, this western sensitivity and money-making
ethos seem to have combined to make a show that
has been specifically designed to appeal to western
tastes. It also sets out to try to examine the effect
western influences have had and will have on Japan.
However, it does this in a much more half-hearted
fashion, presumably because it might have affected
the populairty of the show overseas.
But this is still anime, so I think someone, somewhere
has decided that the best way to achieve all of
these aims is to make a ‘homage’ series.
Every single plot point, twist, secret, string-pulling
shadowey character and girl with big gun idea in
Bakuretsu Tenshi is not original.
I can see what they were going for and it sort
of works, but it also sort of doesn’t work.
As I say, I came with a lot of expectations to BakuTen,
and not much actual knowledge, so the first time
I watched it I was more overcome with a strong sense
of dissappointment. It felt like an opportunity
missed, all flash and bang and absloutely no depth. |
 |
Although that last impression has really
changed for me, to be honest. BakuTen does
still lack any depth, even though I picked
up on the whole “homage” thing
– the plot is flacid and is often either
disregarded on put on the side in many of
the episodes. Indeed, the central core of
the story is so ‘lite’ you could
probably write it on the back of an envelope.
And you really woudln’t have much difficultly
in guessing how it goes either – which
I beleive is entirely deliberately, but it
also left me with a kind of hollow feeling.
Something western anime fans often site as
the reason they like anime is that it is more
original.
Now this, or course, is complete rubbish.
Only a very tiny minority of things are truely
original, but that’s nothing to be worried
about – we are all constantly bombarded
by ideas, concepts and thoughts throughout
our lives, and so we inevitably tend to recycle
those. And as, anime tends to recycle the
same ideas and concepts, and explore the same
themes, just like western art forms do. |
|
What these people are actually referring to is
that the approaches taken in anime are different
to those they’ve seen before. So they seem
original and new, despite the fact that you could
probably find half a dozen other things that share
the same basic plot and or ideas. I mean, if you’d
never encountered the basic story that’s told
in Romeo and Juliet and somebody showed you one
of the many inferior films based on the same idea,
you’d probably think it was amazing.
So BakuTen takes the approach of paying homage
to the creators favourite shows and genres. There
are references galore in the show, and the plots
are all based on other series and episodes of other
shows.
But you see this is where it fails. Having decided
to go down this route of casting out any pretence
of originality, they also appear to have made a
bigger error. They’ve made the homages too
generic. So instead of having an episode that is
a tribute to alien, we end up with a show that takes
alien and smooshes it together with a bunch of alien
based shows and what you end up with is something
that’s so generic it’s, well, it’s
boring and predictable. |
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| back
to top |
|
| summary |
| The Summary: Just not very good. |
| The Score: 2/5 |
| The Pictures:
(click for larger versions) |
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