Reviews From Anime to Board Games, and More!
This is the third instalment of the “Anime X-Change Project” reviews. If you don’t know what that is, be sure to check out all the info here from an earlier post. Today we’ll be looking at a Chinese animation called Mo Dao Zu Shi which was recommended by @YuAlexius. This isn’t my first Chinese show, but it certainly is the best one I’ve seen. Just how good is it? You’ll have to read on to find out!
This is the second in a series of reviews for the “Anime X-Change Project”. If you don’t know what that is, be sure to check out all the info here from an earlier post. This time we are looking at a six episode ONA series, Time of Eve which was suggested by @nobIemonsters. I’ve been meaning to give this a look for some time now and this was the perfect excuse! With that, let’s dive right into my thoughts.
When it comes to short-form shows, I really haven’t watched that many. There’s I Can’t Understand What My Husband is Saying as well as Tonari no Seki-kun, and not much else in terms of what I’ve actually bothered with (I’m sure if you looked there are one or two more, but the titles I listed are what sprang to mind). The former being a show that I wasn’t super into and the latter being a pretty big hit. So where does Null & Peta fit into all this? Someplace in the middle.
It’s not like I go out of my way to avoid these shorter shows, it’s just most of the time they aren’t that great or they don’t see any real distribution. That’s why when I saw that Crunchyroll had picked up Null & Peta, I decided to check it out since I was interested in the show’s premise:
Genius inventor Null tragically loses her older sister Peta in an accident. To get over the grief, Null develops “Peta Robo,” a robot with the same characteristics as her late sister. However, the robot is a little different as to what Null expected.
-MAL
It seemed to me that the show would have a nice blend of comedy with an occasional serious moment, which is my general preference when it comes to something like this. I was right in this assessment, and while I can say that there’s more going on than it first appears (it’s not really even that hard to figure out), the production didn’t skip any beats in ensuring that the show lands.
Additionally, at exactly five minutes per episode, you aren’t risking much by watching this. There are 12 episodes in total that utilize their time well… mostly at least. One episode didn’t quite jive with me like the others, but it wasn’t anything that ruined the show.
As I said, everything generally comes together to deliver a great product. The jokes are funny, the animation is nice, and all the other elements play nicely with each other. It was a smart move to ease into the more serious parts of the show, that while being predictable, felt natural in their execution.
My only real complaint with the series is the lack of an ending theme, or really an ending anything. Don’t confuse this with the show having a lack of resolution, it does have that, what I mean is the episodes end abruptly. You can sense when this is going to happen, but it causes dialog to get truncated, and worse yet, some moments to lose impact.
The only trailer I could find is for Brazil but there’s not a lot too this one…
Finally, I wanted to mention that this seemed to be a precursor to a game that is yet to be released at the time of writing (1/9/20). I’d be interested to see how that ties into all of this and if the game itself is any fun. I’ll leave a link to the game here so you can check it out if you’d like.
With that, I’d love to hear your thoughts on Null & Peta. If you decide to try the game out, I’d also enjoy hearing about your experience there too. Want to support my writing? You’ll find my donation buttons below, to which I’d be eternally grateful for you checking them out. Thanks for stopping by and I can’t wait to see you again soon!
I’ll save you the trouble, yes, 7 Seeds was a worse Netflix show than Hero Mask was. That’s really saying something, and a massive disappointment because this show is based on a very well regarded manga that is extremely interesting! This adaptation does have the intrigue, but it fails on almost every level to execute on any of it.
Long time readers will know that studio Gonzo and I have a history as I’ve watched a surprisingly large amount of their library. It’s impressive that they are still producing stuff even today, like in today’s case with 7 Seeds. Even though I think this show is rubbish, it does live up to my main thought on Gonzo’s work: not all of their shows are good, but they are all at least interesting.
This is a doomsday survival story. The world is about to end, so the government forms teams of people, putting them in cryosleep, so that they can one day rebuild society long after the remainder of humanity has been wiped out as a last resort. It’s such a strong premise, which I am not doing justice to.
I was just praising Phantom in my last article for how well it adapted its source material by making changes, that I feel kind of bad about what I have to say on 7 Seeds’s behalf. It too makes changes, but it really doesn’t work at all. Shots are pretty faithful to the manga, the issue more lies in that an episode could cover up to 10 chapters of the manga at a time. That’s absurd!
All of this isn’t helped by the fact that the anime chooses to jump all over the place, following various groups of people, some even on unique timelines. It isn’t like things are hard to follow, but stuff is just constantly happening and way too quickly. Especially the bad stuff.
What I mean by that, is the bad things that happen to the characters. Even if you somehow cared for any of them (seriously, there are maybe 3 I didn’t totally hate), you have no down time to appreciate when they have a moment of calm. Unrelentless is how I would describe this, it just keeps throwing tragic event, after tragic event.
On the note about the characters, they are all terrible, even the supposed “good guys” from the “good teams”. Let me give you an example, one character hates another character because he is kind of a coward. She does horrible stuff to him and others. Later, he dies to save her life and MAGICALLY she gives a huge speech about how much she loved and cared about the dude. It all feels so fake. These don’t even feel like characters.
It wasn’t all bad though, like I said. There was a lot of cool world building details and concepts tossed around. 7 Seeds even managed TWO whole (mostly) effective story beats! One was about an underground shelter, the first way the government tried to protect people. This was the more effective of the two, even if it was a little goofy and over the top in places. The second was about Jesus, but he’s good at baseball and also has dogs. It was just his backstory.
Otherwise, the animation was baffling in terms of how bad it was. The character’s look great, aside from the gross hair thing, which is cool because the manga art would not have translated well to animation. Music was a joke, even the OP and ED. I’ve already spoken to the writing and direction, so that’s it really.
I guess there is one pretty big thing left. 7 Seeds doesn’t even have an ending! Netflix really has a bad habit of not finishing what they start when it comes to these “original” projects. Thankfully, I do know that the second half of this series is coming soon, but it was a pretty big mistake to leave things hanging like they did.
Not going to lie, I was still interested in watching to see how things progressed. The world was interesting and critiquing the issues with things was fun for me. However, leaving off on what I wouldn’t even call a cliff hanger, literally just cutting from the middle of what feels like a normal episode, was gross. It also wasn’t clear that this was meant to just be a part 1 either.
Should mention, the dub is not bad. Anyway, this trailer doesn’t look too bad, does it? Yeah, I wish it was true…
Of course it isn’t hard to figure that out once you finish the “final” episode, but it just doesn’t sit well with me. Clearly, I mean I’m on my third paragraph about it now. Do yourself a favor, totally pass on 7 Seeds. If you really want to check it out, at least wait until the second half drops on Netflix so you (hopefully) get a complete product.
Did you make the mistake of watching 7 Seeds? Totally disagree with me here? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Consider dropping a few bucks my way by hitting the Ko-fi button below if you like my articles here. Thanks for reading and see ya soon!
Once again my paying attention to Digi has paid dividends. Love him or hate him, I do often stumble across excellent recommendations, especially of more obscure titles. One of his recent videos, “Finish or Fail A-pocalypse #2: Ayashi no Ceres & The Traveler’s Diary” convinced me to check out the show in question today. With six, three minute episodes, The Diary of Tortov Roddle is worth checking out for just the novelty alone. Continue reading “The Diary of Tortov Roddle – A Moving Painting”
This is how I would describe the 2016 ONA series Planetarian. Based on the Key visual novel of the same title, Planetarian tells the story of a lonely robot and a man who has all but given up on life. Spanning only five episodes, this short series packs an emotional punch in about your average film’s runtime. It may not be the strongest Key work to date, but it certainly leaves an impact. Continue reading “Planetarian – ONA’s Done Right”
Jon Spencer Reviews 