Death Note

After 3 Episodes: The Death Note manga is the suspense and thriller genres epitomised. THe plot twists and just shear intelligence involved in it’s story are pretty much unique, as far as my knowledge of Anime and Manga extends. So when I saw that the now finished manga series was being taken to the little screen (as well as the big screen as Live Action), I thought I’d take a look.

The storyline is exactly the same as with the manga. Our ‘hero’, Yamagami Raito finds a notebook entitled ‘Death Note’, containing rules concerning the fact that whoever’s name is written in this notebook will die. Initially a non-believer, two swift criminal deaths later he discovers that he now has the power of a god, and begins to kill off criminals with his own sense of ‘justice’, under the guise of ‘Kira’. Not surprisingly, the police catch on, and they recruit the infamous private detective, ‘L’, to catch this invisible murderer.

The strength of the series is definitely the intelligence behind each character, especially between Raito and L, as they strive to outwit and outbluff each other through what would otherwise seem friendly banter and games of tennis (they like their tennis over there don’t they). The transition to screen is smooth in this respect, with the story feeling even more exciting and alive due to the audio-visual layer now available to appreciate the story through. At time of writing, this seems to keep getting better and better. The credits and other sounds are very apt and enjoyable, and tend to add to the mood of the series in a very beneficial way. Nevertheless, the series does have its failing: the animation. This is pretty at a glance, but if you look closely, there are a multitude of flaws, e.g when a character moves his head, it actually seems to change shape, and the faces keep changing slightly.

Besides this small flaw, at the time of writing, the Death Note anime looks like it will be a great, enjoyable fable, taking the best parts of the manga and adding a little more spice.

Rating: 8/10

Soul Hunter

I have a lot of Korean and Chinesefriends at my school, and, since they know I like anime and manga, they often reccomend me a title to have a look at. Soul Hunter was apparently a rather famous manga series in it’s day, and I got the privelege of getting the DVD series as a birthday present. This is a very odd anime.

The story centres around the Chinese Yin Dynasty, which is crumbling from the inside out, the leaders being controlled by demon immortals to perform their greed-filled desires. The immortal world decide that it’s had enough of this, and decides to rid the human world of these demons through Project ‘Soul Hunt’. Now all they need is a sap to do it for them. Along steps Taikaibou, armed his trusty Poapei (I’ll get to that later) and magically hippo-like whining creature (bottom right of the picture), he is enlisted, completely against his will, to carry out this task, gathering a few comrades throughout the series.

Now this, in many respects, is a good anime. It could have been a great anime, but I’ll get to that later. One of my favourite parts of the series is the Poapei. Each immortal has his or her own, each with an individual ability which sets it out from the rest. Some of these are absolutely fantastically conceived. There is a duo that illustrated this well. One has a megaphone which paralyzes someone should he call his name, and the other has a necklace of beads which expand to trap people inside. Now that is genius. This is one of the stronger points of the series, which makes each new encounter exciting as you wait to find out what ability each new character brings (this is also used effectively in Naruto to great success). The other strong point of the series is the humour. Authentic character interactions due produce some odd yet funny moments. Whenever Taikoubou is on screen, Soul Hunter becomes exciting and fun. The constant bickering between him and what looks like a flying hippo that he flies on, Sibu, creates some grand comedy. Soul Hunter does a great job with this and it is here where the series truly shines.

However, whenever Taikobou is off screen, the series turns humourless and dry. The story is not a great fable by any means, and is a sort of flimsy take on the fall of the Yin Dynasty. The director obviously couldn’t decide what he wanted this show to be, and this shows. The feeling constantly flip-flops: a historical drama concerning feudal system on one side, then an action adventure of the other. I know many series can pull this off effectively, but this just doesn’t, which after the first 13 episodes, make this series farely frustrating to watch.

Overall, Soul Hunter is definitely worth a look, as it does have it’s merits, but at the same time, can tend to be a let down compared to what else is available in this genre.

Rating: 5/10

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 12th, 2006 at 5:46 pm and is filed under Anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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