Post by KAndrw on Mar 13, 2007 6:52:10 GMT -5
CC/GF is always going to be my favourite. I think Hiltz works well if you decide that he has secrets - that although he talks a lot about what he's doing, a lot of what he does is for reasons that are never explained. There's not really any evidence either way, so I just go with what makes the story better
The music was great, the secondary characters had some great episodes (Irvine's loss of the Command Wolf, Moonbay's Waltz), and the female characters were MUCH stronger than those from Fuzors. Minor characters were drawn back temporarily during Hiltz' rampage to make it more 'real'.
For both Deathsaurer battles, I think it did a really good job of communicating what I consider the key theme of the show - that Van's strength is primarily the people standing behind him. In both big battles it takes lots of people, many of them previously enemies, working together to beat the baddie. Even though Van is still the magical hero who saves the day with the loving power of his heart, it's his allies that let him do so. Formulaic, but I still think it's a nice example of the formula, especially in a cartoon aimed at children.
Fuzors also has the everybody-in thing at the end, but I don't really like it because I just don't care about the characters. I find the Fuzors character development really weak, especially the very poor female characters - Sweet and Amy are no Moonbay and Fiona, or even a Leena and Naomi! In fact, the only thing I do like about the Fuzors ending is the degree to which Blake sacrifices himself to protect Luke.
And of course, the terrible voice acting lets down an already dire script. The way that names are pronounced makes it very clear that the script was written entirely in japanese, then translated to english by people who were not familiar with zoids - not quite the english/japanese co-production the anime was touted as being! The quality control was so poor that even non-zoids fans can spot the continuity error of Blake referring to a genosaurer as a guy-ricky in his flashback.
And Guy-ricky deth-troy? Did they pull the transliterators straight out of high school japanese classes? Hey, you know how to read a katakana chart, how would you like a job translating anime? It's a sad state of affairs when the Magnapacific box art and encoding actually brings the quality of the product up!
The music was great, the secondary characters had some great episodes (Irvine's loss of the Command Wolf, Moonbay's Waltz), and the female characters were MUCH stronger than those from Fuzors. Minor characters were drawn back temporarily during Hiltz' rampage to make it more 'real'.
For both Deathsaurer battles, I think it did a really good job of communicating what I consider the key theme of the show - that Van's strength is primarily the people standing behind him. In both big battles it takes lots of people, many of them previously enemies, working together to beat the baddie. Even though Van is still the magical hero who saves the day with the loving power of his heart, it's his allies that let him do so. Formulaic, but I still think it's a nice example of the formula, especially in a cartoon aimed at children.
Fuzors also has the everybody-in thing at the end, but I don't really like it because I just don't care about the characters. I find the Fuzors character development really weak, especially the very poor female characters - Sweet and Amy are no Moonbay and Fiona, or even a Leena and Naomi! In fact, the only thing I do like about the Fuzors ending is the degree to which Blake sacrifices himself to protect Luke.
And of course, the terrible voice acting lets down an already dire script. The way that names are pronounced makes it very clear that the script was written entirely in japanese, then translated to english by people who were not familiar with zoids - not quite the english/japanese co-production the anime was touted as being! The quality control was so poor that even non-zoids fans can spot the continuity error of Blake referring to a genosaurer as a guy-ricky in his flashback.
And Guy-ricky deth-troy? Did they pull the transliterators straight out of high school japanese classes? Hey, you know how to read a katakana chart, how would you like a job translating anime? It's a sad state of affairs when the Magnapacific box art and encoding actually brings the quality of the product up!