Category: Drama

Sexy Voice and Robo, The Girl and the Otaku from U.N.C.L.E.

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I actually watched the live action series of Sexy Voice and Robo, and enjoyed it immensely, thanks to it staring Matsuyama Kenichi (of L fame). I’m not sure exactly at what point I found out it was based on a manga, it must have been from Hisui. In any case, this Manga Moveable Feast deal seemed like a good as time as any finally get around to reading this work involving an amateur sleuth, a role that I have an immense fondness for, and a robot otaku.

I picked up the Sexy Voice and Robo manga a few years ago after reading several positive reviews and finding its independent comic vibe quite intriguing (plus the comic store had it 40% off). I liked it so much I threw it on my 2008 year in review but until now it went without a full discussion. When The Manga Curmudgeon proposed this project we both decided to throw in our two cents on a great franchise we had not given our full attention to on the blog.

Nico Hayashi has two amazing abilities, one is immediately obvious and the other is a little more subtle. She has the ability to change her voice with tremendous range. This ability has led to her uncanny insight into how people think and consequently which lets her read people like a book. One day an old gentlemen notices Nico’s talents and hires her to be a troubleshooter for various odd assignments. During her first mission she cons the otaku Iichiro Sudo into helping her. She soon forms an odd friendship with “Robo” as she calls him and involves him in various other assignments. All the stories in Sexy Voice and Robo involve Nico getting involved with someone and their problems. Almost all the cases revolve around one or more self-involved people with selfish problems. Although she is being paid by the old man for most of her mission it is obvious that she loves solving mysteries and figuring out how people work.

The style of both its story artwork are captivating in Sexy Voice and Robo. Take the visuals which will hit you immediately, it has got a more raw and energetic feeling than much of the manga released in English. The uncontrolled line work, the less precise flow, and the boldness of the strokes and shadows really enhance the read. It’s a comic by all means but it has a fine art quality to it at points. And at other points it made me think about American indie comics. I don’t know how much they have influenced Kuroda, but it comes off as a great hybrid style. The story then takes all that energy from the art and adds humor and a charming bittersweetness to top it off. This story simply stated is about a few happenstances meetings which lead into a whirlwind of human stories that are all little off kilter but moving.

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Legend of the Galactic Heroes Part 1: Ambition

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Random warning: Never watch the previews, NEVER, they are full of spoilers. And so are the episode titles, so never look at them, NEVER.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes can be one of the most intimidating series to start in all of anime with 110 episodes in the main OVA series, several movies,  and 52 OVA side story episodes it can seem like madness. But this is the definitive space opera inside or outside of anime.

There are dozen of reasons to watch Legend of the Galactic Heroes: the complex politics, the epic space battles, and just the overall maturity of the the whole production. But the only reason any of that matters is because the characters are so compelling that they make you care about everything that happens. This is why I never cared for Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series despite how good it might be it never connected me to the characters.

I had considered starting Legend of the Galactic Heroes on my own several times but thankfully Narutaki and my roommate decided to join me in watching this series once a week otherwise I would be watching this at a much slower pace. Even if you have to brave it alone know that it few series will reward for your effort and dedication. This review is for the first arc of the series with 26 episodes.

So perhaps you don’t know anything about Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Well, let me tell you, it’s infamously epic and quite long. And no we didn’t write that wrong, it is a 110 episode OVA.

You might be saying to yourself, well 110 episodes sounds long but compared to many a shonen fighting show it’s not too crazy. But this isn’t a shonen fighting show, these 110 episodes are a dramatic, political, and strategic running narrative with a cast that swells with significant characters.

But don’t worry, as the title implies, you can quite easily break the show into parts. You can even take a break between parts, but I promise you won’t want to. That is what makes it so amazing! Space opera has never been done better than Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

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Secret Santa Project Review: Texhnolyze, What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.

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The roulette wheel of fortune is a fickle beast. It can choose to see you go home a winner or it can clean you out without remorse. We had to choose between Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase, Millennium Actress, and Texhnolyze. There was no force on Earth that was going to make Narutaki casually watch Moon Phase; Millennium Actress was a solid choice but we had seen enough Satoshi Kon to easily assume we’d like it so it would have been against the spirit of the project. We gambled on the generally unknown: Texhnolyze. I myself had avoided it because I had heard it was relentlessly grim and obtuse by design which are two things I generally do not care for. We would both learn that my guesses on what this show would be like was all too correct.

To fully embrace the project, I felt Texhnolyze was the only option. I had literally never even heard of the show before and thus I went in with no expectations, no prejudice, and no idea what was going on. This actually became a running theme of the series, the “not knowing what was going on” part that is. Most of Texhnolyze in fact remains an enigma to me even after watching the whole thing and writing this now. But then again, I have no real desire to discover its secrets after all this. In fact, the only thing I can say for sure that was good about this show was that a Gackt song was used for the ending theme!

In the city of Lux, Ichise is a prize fighter until one day he angers someone enough to have them cut of one of his arms and one of his legs off leaving him to die in the street. When he is found struggling to live by a woman name Doc he is given cybernetic limbs. He does not accept his new limbs at first but as tensions in Lux grow to a frenzied pitch he soon finds himself involved in a apocalyptic prophecy only truly known to a young girl named Ran who he seems linked with. I think that is what it is about but I would hardly bet money on that fact. I don’t mind being dropped into a strange world and then slowly learning about it but Texhnolyze takes it too far by not giving me enough pieces of the puzzle. Shows like Haibane Renmei and Xam’d:Lost Memories do similar things but they give you enough information about the main story that you feel you understand what happened but still leave the impression the world still has many secrets it never revealed.

He was a prize fighter!? I just thought he was some schmuck they threw in the ring to get beat on. The first episode has almost no talking so you are left to interpret what is going on, and though the talking increases in further episodes, the requirement to figure out what was going on with little explanation stays the same. I believe in storytelling that “shows not tells” but this was too extreme. Heck, it’s not even clear the city is underground till episode 20. But despite that, the setting is where I would give the most praise for Texhnolyze. It was fully realized and quickly established as a city full of people vying for power and survival, an overall quite unhappy place.

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