| 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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| details |
| The Genre: sci-fi/comedy |
| The Format: Box set featuring 12 episodes across
3 DVDs, released by Geneon |
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| The plot: In the near future of Tokyo, the Metropolitan
Police Department forms a secret unit called "WARRIORS"
to solve the many heinous crimes. The members that
make up this crime fighting team are: Rio, a police
officer specializing in any form of martial arts;
Maya, an eagle-eyed sniper; and Lilica, a prisoner
with supernatural powers. First the Warriors rev
up to face a local biker gang that has been harassing
local citizens. Then they confront a mobile robbing
machine that chose the wrong target, Rio! The girls
then must disarm a bomb...if they can find it! Finally,
the crew must catch a thief that has been creating
a disturbance around town. |
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| opinion
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| The hell happened there?
Back in the early 90s I used to collect quite a
few american comic books. I’m not sure of
the history, but at the time the comics industry
was going through something of an explosion. Especailly
the main stream books like Marvel’s X-Men
and Spiderman titles, and it was these that I collected.
However as is almost inevitable with all of these
sorts of explosions there was a crash. Now this
was inevitable in my opinion, as the target market
for this sort of product is an ever-changing one
and what one generation of kids like won’t
necessarily work with the next generation of kids.
But other people like to blame the industry itself.
Y’see at the time, Marvel had realised that
cross-overs were a great way of expanding sales.
All you needed to do was plonk spiderman or wolverine
into one of your other titles and its sales would
sky-rocket. |
In addition, if you also crossed over the
entire story between the two books you could
get even greater sales, since both audiences
would have to buy all of them to understand
the storyline.
What also didn’t help was that there
were multiple books for the more poular characters,
such that for example you had ‘Amazing
Spiderman’, ‘Spectacular Spiderman’,
‘Web of Spiderman’ and ‘Spiderman’
all on the go at once! This meant you could
not only cross-over with other characters
from other books, you could also cross over
within these books as well!
Now, to the money men, this may have seemed
like a great idea, but there’s a falseness
behind it. They ended up in a situation whre
there were so many cross-overs and so many
books that it began to piss people off. |
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At the time there was also a tendency to have
“alternate realities”. You can kind
of understand the logic behind this – you’ve
got a new talent you want to put to use somewhere,
and they’re full of great new ideas. But newness
is a risk. People may not like the brand new title.
What we know they like are the existing characters,
so why not create an alternate reality?
That way you can have existing characters that
peopel like, so they’ll buy the book, but
it’s using new ideas and concepts, so you’ve
kept your talent happy. Again, however, there are
problems. It gets confusing, and people often like
change even less than they like newness.
And an alternate realities is what seems to have
happened here. Where Burn Up W and Excess are clearly
Burn Up: The Next Generation, Burn Up Scramble appears
to be Burn UP: The Alternate Reality. |
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Quite why they did this, I don’t know.
When I saw cover images of Scramble, I just figured
they’d updated the chara designs, but it would
essentially be a continuation of some sort. Certaily
the chara names are the same and the basic premise
is intact, but some things have been radically changed.
For example, Yuji is less of a pervert and more
of a love-sick fool, he also only appears occasionally.
Maya is now not so much of an ott flamboyant gun
otaku in Scramble, and whilst she is still clearly
obsessed with weapons her personaliy is very different.
In fact, it’s almost like she’s been
lifted out of Noir or Madlax and dumped in Scramble
(and for me this is really bad as I dislike Noir
and Madlax).
Of course the main character, Rio is still a slightly
dumb, genki character, but now her money problems
have been down-plyed and removed. This has the unfortunate
effect of making her even more 2-dimentional. She
is now almost totally personality-less and if it
wasn’t for the occassional flash of flesh
it would be easy to forget she was even there. |
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The style of leader for team Warrior has
also had a make-over. She’s now veers
into evil bitch territory and if I’m
honest, it doesn’t work. One of the
charms of the previous Burn Up stories was
that they were very much all-for-one and one-for-all.
However, in Scramble we have a team versus
authority figure story, and it feels both
misplaced and mis-directed.
The only good change in the series is that
made to Lilica. In previously incarnations,
she was a (slightly too young) hacker character,
but here she has been given psychic/mystic
powers. Lilica is able to predict future crimes
and draw them out, although what she does
draw is often open to some interpretation,
not least because she is a bad artist. This
is one of only a handful of nice touches.
Initally Lilica is also something of a damaged
goods character, and it’s her development
as an independent character and her growing
bond with the other girls that kept me watching. |
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In previous volumes there’s been an undercurrent
story that’s tied the episodes together and
that’s certainly true again here. However,
this time it feels rather badly done, much is in
keeping with the rest of the series.
The animation is very poor and the soundtrack is
odd, to say the least. Plus the plot is un-interesting
and the fan service and jokes are both very thin
on the ground. I know in stand-alone those last
two points may seem a little odd – I mean,
jokes and fan service aren’t required in every
sereies – but this is upposed to be a Burn
Up story, where they are pretty essential for success.
Quite why they decided to dust off the Burn Up
franchise and make a hash of updating it, I don’t
know. |
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| summary |
| The Summary: Takes a while to warm up, but stays
pretty close to the Burn Up Excess formula, although
the animation is a little dodgy at times. |
| The Score: 2/5 |
| The Pictures:
(click for larger versions) |
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