School Rumble Semester 2 – Part 1 — Ghost Hunt — Shuffle Vol. 6 — xxxHolic season 1 — anime dvd reviews
Wow. Our queue’s been filling up faster than ever before, but there’s a lot of really cool stuff to be seen. I’m going to do my best to knock a bunch of these out over the next few weeks, continuing the capsule format. Hopefully we’ll cover a lot more ground this way. This week I have School Rumble Season 2 – Part 1, Ghost Hunt Part 1, Shuffle! vol 6, and the whole season of xxxHolic. Coming up we’ll have reviews of Ouran Host Club part 1, the Negima Special, Black Lagoon disc 3, Claymore, AnimEigo’s much awaited Yawara box set, and much much more. Stay tuned and enjoy. — Chris
School Rumble Second Semester – Part. 1
I love School Rumble. I discovered the show with the fifth disc of Season 1, and was immediately drawn to the show’s fast paced, completely berserk brand of comedy. A tangled mess of unrequited affections, embarrassing misunderstandings, crazy action, lapses into fantasy, film and anime parodies – it was all there, and with a surplus of fun and super-slick animation. I was surprised, enthralled, and completely entertained. However, when its final disc was released, and no close was brought to the show’s storyline, I was a little disappointed. You see, at that time I had no idea there was a second season! The Extra Class DVD perked my spirits back up, and now, with the release of Season 2 part 1, I’m fully back in the School Rumble fanboy camp.
Picking up where the previous season ended, Semester 2 sees Harmia and co back at school for another round of animated chaos. In fact, all the strangeness of the previous season’s close (and extra episodes) have been incorporated into the storyline, including Harima’s inexplicable sojourn as a deep-sea fisherman, and subsequent acquisition of fish-bone fountain pen. So, yes, Harima has completed his Manga, but the time spent with Yakumo putting the final touches on that masterpiece (including an overnight inking session) has left their peers questioning their relationship. This, of course, results in even more jealous rages, awkward situations, and increasingly complicated social dynamics. As for the rest of the school, they’re busy preparing for the annual culture festival. Anything but mundane, their efforts toward deciding a class project (culture play, coffee shop with maids, or bikini sumo wrestling), result in numerous conflicts, including a full on night-time covert military operation, complete with semi-automatic weapons! Needless to say, It’s a whole lot of fun. And the best part? It’s just the start of the semester!
With School Rumble Second Semester – Part 1 Funimation drops 13 episodes of the second season of this awesome show. That’s right. Thirteen, and for only slightly more than the cost of two of season 1’s 4-episode discs. There are no real extras to speak of on the disc, but frankly, I never did anything with the magnets that came in the previous volumes. The slimline cases do have the traditional reversible covers though. I love School Rumble, and I love this set. Pick it up.
Ghost Hunt . I quite like supernatural shows, and the concept of the ghost hunt intrigues me. No, not the retarded theatrics of your everyday Most Haunted episode, but the actual pseudo-scientific process of paranormal investigation. The high-tech equipment, the investigative process, the efforts toward proving or disproving a spiritual infestation… all that stuff. And that’s exactly what Ghost Hunt delivers, in spades.
Imagine, if you will, a paranormal Scooby Doo by way of TV’s MythBusters. That’s Ghost Hunt. The series focuses on a young highschool girl recruited into a ghost hunting team, the Shibuya Psychic Research Center, comprised of various persons of varying psychic and scientific disciplines. There’s an egotistical shrin-maiden, a narcissistic technologist, a Buddhist monk, an Australian exorcist, a celebrity medium, and, of course, our plucky young heroine. The team tackles a number of infestations, each lasting an average of three episodes before a resolution, with many proving legitimate hauntings as often as not.
And herein lies the cool factor: you actually learn a bit about the paranormal through the show. Examples of such education include the prevalence of adolescent psychic interactions surrounding poltergeist infestations, and the early historical roles of dolls as potential spirit vessels. Furthermore, the show is presented in an old-school detective format, with actual clues you can follow in order to determine the authenticity or fakery of a haunt situation – no CSI style twists, or solutions relying on omnipotent investigators.
Those looking for more action-oriented supernatural story-lines might be a little disappointed in Ghost Hunt’s slow, methodical approach to storytelling, but I found it oddly refreshing. The characters are all pretty well fleshed out, and the Ghost Hunt team, as a whole, are fun to watch. Production values for the show are noticeably high, despite the rather cheap opening and closing title sequences. Animation and voice acting are all solid, and pretty much par for the course given the J.C. Staff crew. If I have any misgivings about the show, they would have to be that the Funimation release of the series appears to be only thirteen episodes long (Wikipedia says the show is 25 episodes, while the DVD box claims to contain the entire series). Still, the show is pretty fun. If you’re at all interested in a supernatural investigation that doesn’t insult your intelligence, you’d do well to check out Ghost Hunt.
Shuffle! vol 6 . About the only thing I love regarding this volume is the fact that the show’s finally over. I genuinely liked the start of the Shuffle! series, but the nosedive it took during the second half of its tale really put me off. I’d hoped that somehow the show would recover, but alas, the downward spiral only continued with this volume. This disc sees even more pathetic attempts to justify Rin’s inexplicable choice of the uncharismatic, uninteresting Asa. I mean, there’s never been a hint of chemistry between them – it seems they’re simply together based on the script-writer’s roll of a dice. Alas, back to the story. It’s revealed that Asa’s mother was not of this world, and that Asa’s recent recurring ailments center around her reluctance to use her magical powers. In fact, if she continues to resist, she just might die. “Go ahead,” I say. What follows is more retarded melodrama, with Rin doing everything in his power to save Asa’s cardboard cutout of a character. There’s a glimmer of hope at the end of the series, however. Despite his attachment to Asa, the other girls don’t seem to have given up on Rin, .As they repeatedly assert, in the realm of the gods polygamy is the law of the land. Maybe the second season – essentially a tweaked and edited recap of the first season – will offer a bit more fun. Feel free to skip this one.
xxxHolic . So I’ve not had much time to watch this show, and when I have, the constant screaming on the part of the protagonist more often than not had me leaving after a single show. But on mute, with subtitles, xxxHolic is quite cool. Clamp’s tale of a addictions, witches, wishes, and corruption is pretty solid entertainment. The basic story sees Watanuki, a young man plagued by ghostly apparitions cured through a change encounter with Yuko, a witch possessing wish-granting powers. He wishes, she abides, and the pestering spirits are no more. But Yuko’s bestowments come with a hefty price: that which the wisher wishes for must be paid back with something of equal value. Being that Watanuki’s request was a fairly hefty one, he’s forced to become Yuko’s personal assistant. Over the course of the season, Watanuki comes face to face with some of mankind’s darkest addictions, as various “-holics” come begging for Yuko’s services. It’s not always fun and games, but it’s definitely interesting.
In many ways xxxHolic reminds me of 90’s era supernatural shows (ie: The Outer Limits or Tales From the Crypt), in particular those which concerned tales of dark “caveat-emptor” dread, and the terrible effects unchecked desire can have on a personality. In fact, the show’s pretty heady. Bolstering the story are some pretty awesome character designs by the Clamp team. At first I was a little offput by their elongated bodies and tiny heads, but after a few episodes they began to grow on me. If anything, they now seem somewhat inspired by fashion sketches, only further stylized. While Watanuki can be terribly annoying, the show itself, with its compelling bite-sized morality tales, won me over. If you haven’t already begun to collect the xxxHolic discs, it might be a bit cheaper to wait for the inevitable box set, but it’s worth picking up in whatever format you can get. Recommended.
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Hmm. I don’t watch too much anime, but I think I’ll check out Ghost Hunt.
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