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| 6. duckroll
sCRYed (yes, it really is written that way) is a shounen's
shounen anime. A fighting anime and a shounen tragedy opera, this series has just
about every key factor you need for a shounen action show. The story takes place
in a wasteland called Lost Ground that was once a part of Japan, an accident years
ago tore it from the homeland and those born after the accident have a small percentage
of having special powers to "Alter" the matter around them to reform
into weapons which are shaped by their personalities. There
are two lead characters, Kazuma and Ryuho. Kamuza is born outside the city that
is being developed on this wasteland and hence is a standard uneducated punk with
powers. He lives with an orphaned girl named Kanami who works with villagers in
a small village, but for Kazuma he would rather use his powers to do dangerous
work introduced by his friend Kimishima since it pays better and he's a lazy punk
who likes to beat people up. Ryuho on the other hand, works for HOLY, the task
force division within HOLD, which is the mainland government presence on the Lost
Ground. His job is to help "encourage" the people living beyond the
city that HOLD's redevelopment plan for Lost Ground is the best and only way,
because of the presence of others who can use Alters as well, HOLY often resorts
to force to "encourage" people. Clearly, there will be a problem when
these two characters meet, and meet they will. The
social structure and backstory in sCRYed are all very interesting but that's
not what the series is about. On the surface it resembles an anime X-men,
but in reality the show is all about the two leads and their opposing wills tearing
them both apart and drawing them to fight each other, and everyone else who stands
in their way. Produced in 2001 by Sunrise,
this is the second collaboration between director Goro Taniguchi and writer
Yousuke Kurodo after their work on Infinite Ryvius. Ryvius'
character designer Hisashi Hirai also returns, but to mistake this show
for another communication anime with shades of sci-fi would be a big mistake.
Made two years after Ryvius, Sunrise's animation team has definitely
improved, no doubt aided by the difference in subject matter as well. sCRYed
starts with a bang, literally and never lets up. The show is pure action, which
is not to say that there is no character interaction or development, but much
of the development is done while fighting. In sCRYed, most characters learn
more about each other and themselves from fighting, from punching and from getting
kicked, punched and beaten to a pulp. If the concept of a fighting anime does
not appeal to you, this series would be a pretty painful experience. For everyone
else, it is very much a postmodern shounen fighting anime which deals with themes
like urban redevelopment, social programming and government oppression all the
while cleverly hidden behind episode after episode of fluidly animated action
scenes of pure destruction keyed to high tempo rock while occasionally quieting
down to slow melancholic music pieces which mark the calms before and after the
storm. One thing that is surprising about the show
is that for a show with a set number of characters introduced who fight each other
episode after episode, people actually die. Not just the people who fight, but
anyone involved stands a chance of not surviving the series. The show is largely
a tragedy, but for various reasons that I won't go into. Suffice to say, people
don't go home completely happy at the end. In the end, sCRYed is pretty
much a character study of the two leads, Kazuma and Ryuho, the only reason it's
a shounen fighting anime is because they chose to do a character study on two
people caught in a struggle between two different ideals and they can both fight
really well. With good music, solid animation and
very sleek character and Alter designs, sCRYed is the definitive answer
to any fan of shounen fighting. At 26 episodes, the pace is tight and hence there
is almost no filler whatsoever. Every battle matters and the plot and development
of events keeps moving forward at a steady pace towards a solid finale. Bandai's
release of the R1 DVDs have been solid so far, going as far as to include extras
sourced from the sCRYed fan discs released in Japan. Highly recommended. |
| 4. VLeo
Put Dragonball and Project Arms in a bag and
mix well. This is what you get. To put it bluntly, I'm a sucker for no brainer
beat me up animation but sCRYed takes it to a whole new dimension. Indeed
it was as someone put it "Dragonball with better drawings." After
all the storyline got pretty complicated in the middle and I was hoping there
was something more to it than your usual beat-me-ups. When the ending of a bombshell
was dropped, it brought on a feeling of deja vu, the familiar theme of "I
have too much testosterone." Go ahead and watch
it but do so with no expectations. Lastly, guess whose hand it was towards the
ending credits? It was mine. |
| 3. Iodine
A pretty standard lone-super-powered-hero-against-the-world
premise. Our hero is the hot-blooded Kazuya, one of the Alters who can mentally
change matter to turn themsleves into living weapons. He fights to keep the barren
Lost Ground and its inhabitants safe from the well-meaning, but dehumanizing HOLD
forces sent to bring order to the lawless region. The central conflict is between
Kazuya and the HOLY division of HOLD, which uses Alters against others like them.
For a while, this works quite well, as the major players are introduced. None
of the characters, even Kazuya, are totally right in their methods, and their
relationships are set up nicely. But when a requisite villain is unleashed on
the proceedings, the weaknesses in the writing are revealed. There are way too
many characters to deal with adequately, and most of them aren't very well conceived
in the first place. The story especially suffers from a lack of strong female
leads, as the featured ones are only thinly disguised clones of each other. Kazuma
and his rival, Ryuhou, come off better, but their growth is never allowed beyond
a certain point, revealing a rather disappointing fixation by the creators on
mindless fighting for its own sake. The designs
are slick, but tend to get more outlandish, the more minor the character is. There's
plenty of flash to the animation, especially the over-the-top fight sequences.
The writing is ambitious, but doesn't do the legwork to be believable in any respect.
As with the opening and closing song lyrics, it also shares the embarassing fallacy
of using poorly researched random English phrases to sound more impressive. In
short, sCRYed is nice looking and has a few good moments, but ultimately
comes out uneven and disappointing. |
| 1. Himiko
sCRYed is an anime that is likely to be enjoyed by everyone.
It's got it all...Action, Adventure, Romance, Internal Conflicts and awesome fight
scenes. This series is very original and is nothing compared to the half-decent
rip-offs of Flame of Recca. Set in the near future, people started to develop
abilities they called 'Alters'. These powers allowed them to be superior to humans
and to have unnatural abilities. There are two types of Alters around, the Native
Alters, which are people that want to live without the governments involvement,
and the Alter Users of HOLY, a secret organization that has Alter users train
and perform tasks for the government. Kazuma is a guy you don't wanna mess with.
He has power, speed and above all...heart. The story is based around him and how
he tries to break the wars with HOLY and the Native Alter users. Since the group
HOLY is trying to maintain peace and capture Native Alter users Kazuma can't help
but be more than pissed about this. Also, in this story we have the narrator,
Kanami, Kazuma's sister-type friend. Kanami is very interesting as well. She narrates
the series by telling how her dreams went and they all relate to the story. Kanami's
placement in this series is what makes it so unique and fun to watch. I believe
that if you can watch the first episode without cringing you can get through the
rest of it wondering desperately what will happen next. |
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