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REVIEW: Blade of the Phantom Master DVD




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DClark



Joined: 11 Aug 2007
Posts: 110
PostPosted: Mon Dec 24, 2007 3:25 am Reply with quote
I liked the movie more than the reviewer, but I do agree with the flaws brought up in the review. To me it felt like two OAVs joined together to form a movie, and left me wanting to know more about the characters and the world in which they live. The main character is a bit of a jerk, but it made me wonder what happened to make him the way he is. I'm also very curious about Sando, and why she is the way she is.

Even though I liked the movie (I think the ANN encyclopedia's user rating of 'very good' leaning downwards towards 'good' is accurate), it left me a bit unsatisfied in that I felt it barely scratched the surface of its world. I would be very interested in a 26 episode series of these characters in this world if it's up to this visual quality, and I think if done right the extra time would allow them to create a very memorable series.
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Randall Miyashiro



Joined: 12 Jun 2003
Posts: 2451
Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park
PostPosted: Mon Dec 24, 2007 8:11 am Reply with quote
I agree that there definitely seems to be two self contained stories here. This series probably would have made a better OVA series since it is hard to adapt print form stories into a mere 90 minutes, I'm a bit surprised at how well it did (higher than Akira) on the rankings here.

I enjoyed Romi Paku's performance and didn't even recognize her until the ED credits since I've gotten so used to her playing Edward Elric.
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Porcupine



Joined: 21 Jul 2004
Posts: 1033
PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 7:41 pm Reply with quote
This show is terrible. I rated this Bad in the ANN encyclopedia. I'm not too surprised at other people's rankings of this show, since the ANN ratings are crap in general, but this is one instance where I really thought the show was so bad that everyone would be able to agree no matter their personal tastes.

From what little I've seen, I also tend to disagree less with ANN reviews as opposed to ANN ratings so I'm surprised the review is so off the mark as well.

If it weren't for the nice DVD cover picture I would have rated this show even lower, at Awful. It's too bad that the drawing style and quality used in the actual show is much worse than the cover illustration.

the review wrote:
Overall: B-
Story : C
Animation : B+
Art : B+
Music : B+

I'm okay with the rating for Story. I agree it was lacking. Not well-planned, and not well-written. I'd probably rate it a little lower, but that's more influenced by the directing and planning rather than the actual plot (which I can't judge since this show is just an excerpt from a longer-running manga series).

I'm totally in shock at the rating for animation given. Is the reviewer blind? I would give this a D for animation and no higher. It's among the cheapest, "I'm just gonna stand here and not move a muscle for as long as possible to conserve the most frames" productions I've ever seen. The animation quality is lower than that of an average TV series. However, there are one or two scenes lasting a couple seconds where the animation quality is temporarily fairly high. But that's it. And those scenes were made for the trailer and just re-used in the show itself. This only reveals how cheap and gimmicky this show actually is, as the ONLY scenes they bothered to animate impressively are what the trailer consists of.

Anything else, 99.5% of the time, it's bargain-basement animation.

Similarly, while Art styles are somewhat subjective, drawing consistency is less subjective and this show wasn't impressive in that area either. Personally I'd give this show a C if not a D for drawing style and consistency. Note that this is different from the cover picture which I would give an A or A-, even by the higher standards of cover pictures/stationary illustrations.

Music, personal taste again, and Ko Otani's style works fairly well with this "Korean" show...but at the same time I found the overall score he did somewhat lacking. Maybe just 1 or 2 good BGM songs and the rest were kind of lackluster, typical of his work I think (as well as many other composers but oh well). I'd personally give the musical score a C+ or B-.

Overall from me...well 'Bad' or 'Awful' should explain it. Smile
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