Anime You’ll (Or At Least, I Did) Regret Watching. Part 2 Out of Too Many.

So, I was supposed to have a so-called “date” today (today meaning Thursday, March the 6th) as people who frequent the Japanator IRC channel might have heard me saying, but I didn’t go because I simply didn’t feel like it. Instead, I have written the second installment of “Anime I Regret Watching” because I’m cool like that(or not).

Anime I regret watching #4: Shuffle! Memories.

What the heck did they do to Primula’s face!?

The first problem about this anime is, I can’t figure out why they made it. I mean, aside from the reason to rip more money off of anime fans, there is simply no reason to have this 12 episodes “sequel” where 11 are made out of recaps. No, I’m not kidding. If you are a Shuffle! fan and thought, “Oh yay! Sequel to Shuffle!” Hold your horses, because it is definitely not a sequel. There is -some- (Note: Very little.) original content within the recaps, and the only episode out of the 12 that contains 100% original content is the last episode, which just an OVA with the usual crew on a boat and have nothing to do with the plot.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I loved the original Shuffle! series. However, I don’t love it enough to watch a water-downed version of it. Frankly, if I want to watch Shuffle! again, I’ll just watch Shuffle! again! Why would I go ahead and watch 11 episode of a water downed version of a series that I enjoyed all of the 24 episodes in the original series!? Why!?

The plot had to be trimmed and condensed so that they can fit 24 episodes into 11, which means only the dramatic scenes get left in and as a result, you can’t relate to the character as well as the original series. Aside from that, this series has more or less the same quality of the original. The animation quality was a tad bit higher, but everything else remained the same. After all, this is just a recap. The only major change in this recap version of Shuffle! is the music, and again, why!? The original music was great, but they just had to go around fiddling with the OP and ED, putting in second rate songs that are sung by the seiyuu, it’s just horrible!

So overall, if you haven’t seen the original Shuffle! series, go watch that instead of this. If you watched Shuffle! and want more of it, only get the last episode of Shuffle! Memories.

More bad anime after the jump.

Anime I regret watching #5: Soul Link.

Another anime by Navel (Shuffle! Memories was also by Navel), and both of them are going to be bashed. Sorry Navel, I love your games, but your anime just suck (with the exception of the original Shuffle!).

To be truthful, I really don’t know where to begin with this anime. It’s so bad that I don’t even want to review it.

First thing’s first, let me just say, don’t watch this. Just don’t. You’ll waste four and a half hours of your life(23 minutes x 12 episodes = 276 minutes /60 minutes per hour = 4.6 hours) watching something that, seem to have a lot of things happening, but actually doesn’t. Let me explain to you why.

The first two or three episodes of this anime consists of a group of students going to a space station which is orbiting Earth. There’s nothing special in this anime, especially the main character who occasionally trips and lands in a random girl’s chest just like every other anime in this universe. We are also introduced to the crew of characters that will be part of this very boring anime. The cast consists of the following: A loli with a brother-complex, a girl with huge breasts that can fight, the main character’s brother who he looks up to, a female scientist who’s almost too perfect, and to wrap it all up, a boring main character and a few ordinary girls.

Then after this very normal introduction, with nearly no lead up at all, some terrorists attack the space station. There’s a normal middle aged, battle hardened soldier with a soft heart, a trigger happy hot girl in skimpy clothing, and you already know the rest. The terrorists force our group of heroes to retreat to a secluded sector of the space station… Where they choose to have a feast. And no, I’m not kidding, throughout this anime there are several random scenes that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot. Guys, the space station is being attacked by terrorists! I think your stomach can wait a little while, and if it can’t then you don’t have to make a full course dinner for Pete’s sake!

A few more episodes pass, and once again, with absolutely no lead up, the scientist (who has a horrendously annoying laugh) betrays our heroes. Amoeba-like blobs, who can change themselves into human-looking creatures, begin to attack our protagonists, while they choose to have more food.

There are some more ecchi scenes, more feasts, more gun fights, the main character’s brother sexes up one of the girls, and another girl who looks as if she’s right out of middle school (wearing a school uniform and all) is introduced to the scene.

All of a sudden, the protagonist group and the terrorist group decides that they need to fight together against the blob zombies. Now there’s one big protagonist group but the funny thing is, no one seems to remember the amount of people the terrorist group killed.

Fast forward another few episodes, the brother who had sex with a girl gets captured by the enemy, the space station is falling down to Earth. It turns out that the scientist was one of the blob zombies creatures all along, and normal bullets have no effect on her. Then, we find out that the middle-school girl is actually the biological daughter of the older brother and the girl he had sex with. They just had sex a couple of episodes ago! There was no time-shift or anything, HOW THE HECK DID YOU GROW UP SO FAST?! On top of that she also has a special ability which can basically kill any of the blob zombies (don’t ask me why she has this ability, at this point, I’ve lost all the will to pay attention to this anime.).

Excuse me, did you just come out of someone’s vagina?

If there’s one thing this anime has done right, it would have to be the OP and ED themes which were quite well done. Other than that, there is nothing, so don’t bother with this anime. Just go find the two songs by Miyuki Hashimoto named “Screaming” and “Dust trail”. (If my memories serve me correctly, they should be on the same single.)

Anime I regret watching #6: Devil May Cry.

I’ll admit I love the Devil May Cry games, but I just can’t bring myself to love this anime. As an anime it’s mediocre at best. I know this post is called “anime you’ll regret watching”, so I really should only put the worst anime in here and not mediocre anime. However, the problem is this: This anime pales in comparison to the game, and I can’t work out who would bother watching an anime named after a video game series if they didn’t like the game.

From this point on, however, I’ll compare this anime with the standards of an anime, not the standards of a video game series that I love.

The music of this anime is very well done; it has some pretty nice pieces that fit well into the mood. I really liked the ending theme “I’ll Be Your Home” by Rin Oikawa. It’s a nice smooth flowing English song which doesn’t sound like Engrish. Her singing voice is also very nice but I can’t seem to find any other songs by her (save one). The opening is an instrument only track named “D.M.C.” which is not a very original name, but it is a nice piece of rock music.

But after this, it goes down hill.

The animation quality in this anime is poor. As an action anime, it barely has any action scenes. While each episode does have a fight with demons and all, it doesn’t last long. Trust me though, it’s a good thing it doesn’t last long because if it did your eyes would bleed from the terribly mediocre animation.

The characters stick well to their counter-parts in game. However, this doesn’t play well in an anime as the main characters are as cliche as usual: Dante the sassy demon hunter, Lady and Trish the bad-ass female demon hunters and the loli that follows Dante around acting very bitchy. Nothing special at all.

Plot: Well, I can’t really say there is one. Basically all you see is Dante running around killing demons. There is a surprising ending which I won’t spoil for you if you should decide to watch it and of course you would. I mean, if you like Devil May Cry as a game, you’ll watch it regardless of what I say.

Well, that’s all folks. This is definitely one of the longest posts I’ve done so far, and I hope I don’t have to do this much bashing next time around. Good bye!