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| 2. Tempy
While visiting her grandparents, young Shiina encounters a
weird star-shaped creature she calls Hoshimaru. Later on she learns that Hoshimaru
is a dragonet, a collection of strange animals with the ability to communicate
with their masters and do their bidding. These masters all seem to be kids, and
some of them propose to change the world by killing off the weak. Shiina finds
some allies in her battle against these malicious kids. Akira is one of these
allies with her dragonet named Ain Soph, but she is very emotionally unstable. Despite
the very cute OP and it being aired on Kids Station, Narutaru is
very much not a show for kids. Though the sex and gore from the manga has been
toned down considerably, the cruelty, shock, and suffering is still very much
there. The kids kill. They torture. And their victims suffer. Shiina is different
because she can't seem to communicate telepathically with Hoshimaru. Yet Hoshimaru
still aids her. Perhaps Shiina and Hoshimaru are the key to bringing humans and
dragonets together? The dragonets have a weird but
not totally unpleasant designs. Hoshimaru does have this completely idiotic expression,
but he's still quite cute. The human character designs features unattractive skinny
long limbs, and it doesn't help that the art and animation are quite poor. The
backgrounds are of especially low quality, with trees being blobs of green and
nowhere near the detail of shows from the same period such as Scrapped Princess. Even
the pacing seems awkward at times, with odd pauses here and there, and less than
spectacular action sequences. But I'm not sure if it's just the general weirdness
of the subject matter, budgetary reasons, or just poor directing. A
secret government agency is hinted at, more strange creatures and their masters
still roam the Earth, and the Bad Kids have not been dealt with, but Narutaru
ends after just 13 episodes. Despite the poor production values and the toning
down, the characters and subject matter is a very intriguing one. The sheer brutality
is unique and exceeds that of Now and Then, Here and There, though the
latter is much better executed show. Still, Narutaru had me fascinated
and since there is more than enough content from the original manga left, I hope
there is a follow up anime series. |
| 1.
FoXdie 
I really was expecting a lot from this, especially since I
heard that the Manga was too freaky for words and shocking even by today's Japanese
standards. And to some extend my expectations were fulfilled. The
story is really complex and I will not even try to explain it because they're
dealing with a ton of characters, but in brief it's about a young girl (Shiina)
who finds a starfish creature (named Hoshimaru) which is somehow linked to her,
suddenly she meets a lot of people who all have such creatures in their lives
(all different, from angels to dragons) and she discovers that the world isn't
such a nice place after all. This sometimes leads to very interesting storylines,
for instance the last 3 episodes really stood out and if the whole series was
as balanced as these 3 eps were, this series would have gotten a 5 star ranking,
they were THAT good. Unfortunately it will take you 10 eps to get there and they're
a mixed bunch. This series has a couple of problems which really bugged me during
the first 9 eps. (ep 10 was a sidestory, which was a stand alone EP, also quite
good) They create stories you see, and interesting ones at that, leaving you begging
for more, only to drop that storyline, leave it totally unfinished and moving
on to a new set of characters with a new storyline, it isn't until EP 11 that
they actually start and finish something, which makes it even more frustrating
because after EP 13, it stops. The unfinished storylines from the first 10 eps
don't get a conclusion; it JUST STOPS, where it should have continued. 13 eps
is just not enough for a storyworld of this magnitude, which is a shame, because
this series had incredible potential. My second
problem is the animation (and artwork (backgrounds especially). They leave a lot
to be desired, which could have been forgiven of course, but it only stands out
because the basic designs are really pretty (the dragonets must be some of the
most original creatures since the angels from Evangelion), but sometimes
they're barely animated which is a real downer for me.
(It's funny, but in
the final 4 eps even the artwork and animation seem to improve. It's like they
finally got the hang of it at the end.) Music on
the other hand is really creepy, fresh and original, very very good. Overall
I suggest you do check it out, it has some incredible moments and the final 3
eps are really really good, if you don't intent too, then just watch these final
three eps. They're incredible, shocking, and excitingly original (in a deep psychological
kind of way and in its subject matter). Shame that it's finished, 13 more of these
wouldn't have gone amiss. |
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