Moving on with the Road to Summer Special is Sonic's failed game reboot Sonic Boom.
The backlash for this thing has finally died down now, so to clarify a few things about how I feel about the games, yes Knuckles looks horrible, yes the games are glitchy and poorly designed and yes I did do the top ten things worst than Sonic Boom several months back, my feelings have always been the same, I've seen and played a lot worst than Sonic Boom so lets see if the cartoon does any better.
Well credit where credit is due, the Sonic Boom cartoon is actually really funny. Using the same characters and restoring some of the slapstick humor used in some of the earliest Sonic cartoons, Sonic Boom cartoon makes up for the rest of this spinoff franchise being bad.
It's an easy thing to say it's not the true Sonic everyone loves but really what medium is? AoStH was so heavy on slapstick that it seemed baffling at times, SatAM while good played a very dark setting to what was otherwise quite a colorful set of characters, Underground had this weird thing going where you pretty much have SatAM's dark setting with cheesy catchy pop music, the Sonic OVA featured the battle with Metal Sonic along with an out of place Catgirl and finally Sonic X featured humans we really didn't need to see in the franchise, so when you look at Sonic Boom that uses copious amounts of slapstick as it's main selling point you kind of come full circle. In the end I just prefer to watch a cartoon that's fun which everyone seems to forget nowadays, Tom & Jerry and Looney Tunes are timeless because they still make me laugh, they never went complicated they only functioned on the slapstick and the punchline and Sonic Boom is very much the same as that. If that's still a problem for Sonic fans then I ask you what do you want then?
As promised here is my review of the Vision of Escaflowne.
The 90s were the renaissance of Anime as some of the most memorable in history were created but kind of lost in the bunch is Escaflowne. Escaflowne is about a girl named Hitomi who's interest in divination lands her in the mystic world of Gaea with a winged Prince named Van Fanel who was slaying a dragon at the time of the incident.
Gaea is at war as the deadly Zaibach Empire attempt to take over the world so it's up to Van to awaken the mecha Escaflowne and along with the knight Allen Schezar, fight back and save the world while Hitomi is stuck in the middle of everything when her powers somehow react with Escaflowne.
Escaflowne can be anything from memorable to forgettable depending on your experience with the series, the first half of the series was fantastic, it showcased some great action, some great suspense and provided a story which was really setting up for a climatic finish but then it got all complicated and kind of fell apart in an attempt to look more intelligent than it really was during the second half, even the extra villains and some of the side characters came across as bland and uninteresting but what really let the series down was the total lack of chemistry between the leads Van and Hitomi. True story now, the Escaflowne Manga featured a glasses wearing school girl who became a busty blonde when she made contact with Escaflowne, and she suited the franchise much better than Anime Hitomi ever did. I guess I'm saying that I don't really like Hitomi as a character, her design compared to other female anime characters at the time was bland, her personality was dull and she never really delivers what the fans want. Okay I don't expect her to be a femme fatale like Faye Valentine, a rambunctious girl like Aisha Clan Clan or a proper audience surrogate character like Meryl Stryfe, but at least those female characters stood out. Hitomi is lucky to be remembered and Escaflowne isn't exactly well remembered to begin with.
Dub is pretty good and the art style is a little dated and a little hard to ignore the big pointy noses, the music is by Yoko Kanno who never fails to bring in viewing numbers.
Final Verdict: Take it or leave it, there's enough to enjoy in the series but if you really want to avoid some of the anime's shortcomings you may want to skip a lot of the second half.
*Dusts off the Endless Wardrobe*
Welcome to the Endless Wardrobe, this feature is basically what I use when I need to make a serious update, a.k.a taking off my reviewing face and character face and speaking with my own face.
During July I'll be on hiatus as I'll be on a long holiday. I may or may not do a one off review during this time but considering what's going on it's unlikely I'll have the time as I'll be welcoming my best friend to the UK.
So for the whole of June is the "Road to Summer Special" where you can expect a post everyday til the end of June featuring the like of.
Retro Retrospective: Expect classic Anime Reviews starting with Escaflowne in the next few hours, loads of top tens and a run of cartoon reviews exploring spinoffs of popular franchises
Anime Walk of Fame: Returning from it's hiatus to bring you more characters to review including the end of the Pretty Cure run and a viewers choice special.
Victory Script: Victory Script returns with a bunch of short stories showcasing new characters.
The Fantasy Zone: New show, Voice Actor Focus will begin it's run as well as your favorites from UAFC as Squid Girl fights the Inklings and more episodes of Heaven & Hell including a rebooted 80s cartoon and a cartoon special of underrated characters.
Look forward to all this and more, see ya next time.
I know Burn Up has been in extreme focus lately and I apologize in advance if you're getting sick of it but I promise you that this is the last review on this franchise for a while, I'll drop off some new anime to review in return later on but for now we have Burn Up Scramble to review.
Burn Up Scramble is a complete reboot of it's predecessors W & Excess, the characters Rio, Maya, Lilica & Yuji remain in the show but each sport new looks and art design either closely resembling their previous designs or going completely left field with new looks; I won't bore you with the details of the story because nothing in regards to the story is really any different from it's predecessors apart from the endings of course, so instead I'll go through the things it does right and the stuff it does wrong.
Pros
If you've never seen the previous incarnations of the Burn Up franchise then you won't feel betrayed by the decision to make this series to begin with. The show is still fun to watch and the action scenes keep to the franchise's theme of police action series.
Cons
The characters are atrocious, even if you didn't know about the previous series; the main three girls while perfectly okay action wise, their personalities really don't match the setting, in fact they look like they belong in different anime all together. Rio is too American which is a strange phrase to use but she reminds me of a character from Sex in the City, made more obvious in the dub and not helped by the fact that she's obsessed with romance which really cheapens her character. Maya looks like she belongs in School Days which if you've seen you'll understand what I'm talking about, this isn't even a violent anime and Maya looks like she would cause more blood to squirt than a standard Elfen Lied episode, made worst by the fact that her quiet, soft spoken personality makes her look more psychotic than sympathetic and finally Lilica looks like the character in a school anime who you hate the most because she's so annoying.
Overall that's kind of a sad thing. The Burn Up franchise is many things, cheesy, ecchi, action packed and silly but overall enjoyable, and what made it work was it's cast of characters with their colorful personalities and striking designs made even the most negative viewer happy. Scramble sucked up everything that made it stand out, played a few characters out of their comfort zone and overall made a forgettable show that never really felt comfortable in it's own skin.
Final Verdict: It saddens me to end my run of the Burn Up franchise on a low but Scramble really took away everything I loved about this franchise and ruined the whole experience. There's barely anything to salvage from this train wreck of an anime.
Remember I said I'd review this at a later date? Well here's your later date as I review it right now. Lets Review Burn Up Excess.
In a slight mirror image of the Burn Up W story, a number of crimes take place that hide a much deeper underlying plot only this time more episodes are given to flesh out the plot better and make the payoff from the final episode a much more rewarding experience than the climax Burn Up W offers.
The cast is exactly the same as before so I need not repeat what they do but there are now more episodes to offer and more opportunities to expand on the character's personalities and dive into their backgrounds a bit, which works well with the likes of Maya, Rio, Nanvel and Maki but Yuji and Lilica stay grounded as a result but then again Yuji being the only guy in a group of sexy policewomen you're never going to be anything other than a pervert which is flanderized to it's maximum in this show, in fact flanderization is the perfect way to sum up the experience as many of the character's already unique traits get maxed up even more, I suppose this was inevitable anyway being a longer series than Burn Up W and already gaining a reputation for obvious fan service which led to the creation of the legendary jiggle counter but at least they could've done was have a little restraint.
Overall Burn Up Excess still maintains the fun Burn Up W was trying to accomplish with it's tiny episode count and succeeds in telling the story it wanted to tell by expanding and fine tuning the details that Burn Up W used in their own storyline. It's living proof that you can make an OVA series into a decent TV Series and while Excess does push flanderization to it's limits it never goes too far that the quality suffers for it.
Dub is similar to Burn Up W but voice cast changes have improved the quality of their performances.
Final Verdict: This is the anime that Burn Up wanted to be in the first place and succeeds in all areas, while it's hard to over look the flanderization of the characters, it doesn't spoil the experience on offer.
