Anime: Blassreiter

I found Blassreiter rather childish, but it's not a children's programme: there's a little strong language, and occasional overt sexual references and gore. It has some themes you'd expect to find in a kids' programme, such as bullying and adoption, and the storyline is pretty straightforward, with no counterplot or mystery. The only mystery is, "Why is this character doing x when clearly they should y?" Even the fight and chase sequences feel perfunctory. They don't propel the plot forward, or allow anything to be resolved.

The production is mixed. It's all quite visually appealing, with mixed 3D and 2D animation that reminds me a little of some of the good Korean animation from the last decade. That said, the 3D character animation is pretty awful: the characters move unconvincingly and could have done with some mocap. Backdrops are nicely done but not jaw-dropping. Though there's no real fanservice in the show, a few shots are quite servicey, conveniently lingering on bosoms or buttocks.

I can't complain about anything on the audio side: the music's OK, and the voice work and sounds don't stick out. The official translation for the English dub is acceptable, but there are places where they make no attempt to render nuances from the Japanese.

Disclaimer: The reviewer apologizes for the quality of her English. She’s never studied it. She’s never written any reviews as well.

Animation:
Ugly CG, nice and unique character designs and well-drawn backgrounds. It takes some time to adjust to the animation in this show, and I suppose that the people who value the animation quality before anything else won’t like it very much, but I, personally, don’t think that the animation is that important, so I won’t focus my attention on it.

Sound: One word - spectacular. Being a musician myself, I always pay a lot of attention to the soundtrack, and I must say that the Blassreiter soundtrack is one of the best anime soundtracks in recent history. There’s music of almost any genre – orchestral pieces, chamber music, strings duets, saxophone and acoustic guitar solos, Rachmaninoff-like piano pieces, upbeat rock tunes and even some techno, jazz and ambient – Hibino Norihiko and his GEM Impact team did an excellent job, with almost every single track being a little masterpiece. And what’s most important, the music perfectly fits the atmosphere of the show. Not a single theme feels out of place. Overall, the soundtrack is worthy of getting and listening even if you didn’t like the show itself.
The voice acting is pretty good too, it’s emotional enough to make the characters believable, and, again, perfectly fitting the atmosphere.

Story: Basically, Blassreiter is created by using a “stories inside a story” model, and the character-related inside stories leave more impression than the main story – they’re very tragic and sometimes shocking. The main story, while not being exceptional, is still pretty solid, and gradually improving after a relatively weak, slow and confusing start. There’s also some unexpected plot twists in the main story, and the ending, while it may seem a bit forced, is probably the only possible ending for this show.

Characters: Another strong point of Blassreiter. The authors did a right thing when they decided to not focus on a single character, thus making an impression that every character has the same value for the show, when no one stands out. The characters aren’t developed too much – but they’re realistic, easy to sympathize with, and all of them, even the minor and episodic characters, serve some purpose and have their own place in the story. They’re all likeable – both heroes and villains.

Value/Enjoyment: Exciting, captivating, emotionally grabbing, it was one of the most enjoyable shows of 2008 to me. I even watched half of the episodes in crappy quality on YouTube (that’s not an advertising by any means), then rewatched them when the “normal” release became available. It sure is worthy of rewatching – even if it’s not a cornerstone in the anime industry, it’s still a show with some meaning and some message to deliver to the viewers, though it relies much on symbolism (mostly religion related, though Blassreiter is not a show about religion in the direct meaning of this word, how it may seem at first, but rather about "religion" as a way of living, something that helps to survive in the most desperate situations, to find a reason to live and to die as well), so you’ll need to pay a lot of attention to the details. Maybe it’s not a show for everyone, but I can recommend it to people who like tragedies and value the overall atmosphere and emotions an anime could deliver more than any technical aspects (like animation, graphics, etc.).

Thank you for reading.

Blassreiter is not your typical show. It's bad in strange ways. I don't think a straight review is completely fitting so I'll do a very short grading and then go onto my fictionalized interpretation of what went on behind the scenes.

Animation- Everything that wasn't CGI was good but the CGI was not done thoughtfully.
Sound- I'm not extremely critical on sound, and it was decent enough (voice acting was good).
Story- The individual parts of the story weren't bad but they didn't fit together and there was a huge lack of cohesion (but an abundance of plot holes).
Characters- There wasn't a whole lot of development and they don't act in believable ways. And not much about them makes sense.
Value/Enjoyment- I sort of enjoyed it some of the time but I only rarely was pained by it. Blassreiter definitely isn't a show to rewatch or buy, but if you've already got it, go ahead and watch it. I think it's a bigger train-wreck than Code Geass R2 (this may appeal to you).


NOTE:
As per above, this isn't a typical review. It's heavily postmodern. It is what I think of the show, it does comment on the qualities of the show, and it can give a person an understanding of whether they would enjoy it or not (and the answer is obviously that they probably will not). Please don't misunderstand. If you only want a typical review, look at any of the other ten trillion reviews on anidb.net or just ignore the subsequent part (the part before this does meet the length requirements and follow the guidelines). I hope you understand what is going on with this and enjoy my creative take on reviewing.

Blassreiter Production: The Movie
Characters:
Mr. Rudolpho Gonzo, the personification of GONZO
Steve McTokyo, the newly hired and underpaid writer of Blassreiter

Notes:
There will be spoilers. I don't really know how these types of shows are made (most of my knowledge comes from an episode of Paranoia Agent) and I don't have a perfect memory so it may not make a lot of sense and definitely will be wrong in some aspects.

Scene I, the office of Steve McTokyo
Enter Mr. Gonzo

Mr. Gonzo:
Hey Steve, uhm, you know that anime that you were writing about the monsters and motorcycles? Well, I had the CGI guys go ahead and animate the first batch of sequences.

Steve
I'm not sure I understand, I only gave you what a I wrote down on a napkin and that wasn't my completed idea. I was blacked-out when I wrote it and the more I think about it the less I like it. The amalgams were a terrible idea. It doesn't even make sense. What insane magical technology could make that work? I'm thinking that these just need to lose the power to control machinery because techno-zombies are cool enough already.

Mr. Gonzo
Well Steve, we'll take that into consideration but you see the animation guys are already up to episode three and we won't make the deadline to air if we have to make significant changes. I know that you may think that we're not doing this in a way that makes sense but if we did it like you want it would have a bad effect on the bottom line. I know this business and I can churn out more butter than any other studio. CGI used to be expensive, but now it's even cheaper than paying a bunch of Koreans to color in two dimensions. But the consumers don't know that. Our CGI guys are so good that for at least the first couple of episodes the fans will be so awed by our amazingly awesome computer graphics that we can make a few creative changes along the line and the only thing that they will be able to remember about the story from the first episodes is that we have some awesome motorcycles and awesome monsters and awesome 3-D fights and just general awesomeness.

Scene IV,

Steve
Mr. Gonzo, sir, I'm pleasantly pleased at where our story is going. I think that we really could have a gem on our hands. Gerd could truly become a complex and enlightening example of Jungian Archetypes. And if we move away from...

Mr. G
Hmm. I really like where you're going with that. Keep with up with the thematic development. Oh yeah, I was talking with some of the guys and I don't think the kids are going to like Gerd. It's not that we here have anything against Germans, but we don't think that the audience will connect with him, so kill him off or something. Amanda is German too, but she lacks the frightening looks of a non-Japanese person. I like her. Okay? Good. And about XAT, I don't like it. We need something better, a secret and powerful organization. And that kid Malek is kind of a downer. And what kind of single-mid-twenties-career-woman adopts a kid too old to be her own son? And...

Mr. G drones on but Steve doesn't hear him. Steve has completely lost the ability to care about anything.

Mr G exits.

Steve pulls out a handle of store-brand vodka. He tosses the script that he wrote into the trashcan.
Well, here's to you, my wonderful little script. Ironic, possibly, that of all that I got in college, the only thing that I'll be using is my alcoholism.

Steve drank himself to death over the course of a month and left the script incomplete. Mr. Gonzo ran it through spell-check and called it overwhelmingly satisfactory. And the rest is history.

The end.

Oh, so here's Blassreiter, a show that was a real rollercoaster experience for me. Usually you would use that expression for a drama that has its happy and sad times, but in this case it was the show's quality making jumps and loops that a jojo-champ couldn't beat. (Ok bad joke)
One is also by default a little skeptic when you see GONZO as the producers, perhaps that does influence your initial judgment a little bit. By all means they also made their share of good anime, but it's very hit/miss.

Animation: The biggest topic here is, did GONZO go over the line? Did they put in ridiculous amounts of bad CG, enough to make people stop watching at ep. 1? The answer is a little mixed, but overall they could and SHOULD have done much, much better. As I also mentioned in the comments section, ep. 1 has the CG nailed down for you. There is speed, lots and lots of speed, but it looks like something made for the very first 3dfx voodoo cards back in the 90's. Later on the battles also get airborne, and I tell you, at times there is so much speed that your brain can't really fathom what is going on. You just barely get an idea that a couple of colored things are bouncing around on the screen.

Apart from that, the regular animation (that is inside buildings and when there is no movement) is quite good. The character designs are original, I always try to remember if I've seen similar characters before.

Sound: The voice acting is pretty good I must say. This anime is a tragedy, and the voice actores make that clear in their voices, you can hear the anger, desperation, sorrow. However when you hear them talk in "analgam" mode, they sound pretty bad.

I listened to the op/ed songs again just now, and all too often I experience a certain thing about the music that just turns me down. They start the song out with some very nice heavy metal riffs, I start thinking, hey this is rockin', but as soon as the vocals come on, the distortion totally fades away (you can barely hear them play any riffs), 'cause you have to listen to the lyrics, you know. Both OP 1 and 2 suffer from this. However ED 2 is a nice emotional ballad, cool song.

Story: The main nerve of any anime, and also what makes Blassreiter rise and fall. After a few standard monster of the week episodes, things quickly get much more intense and dramatic than you ever imagined. Everything is a mystery, who is the guy on the white horse, who is the woman with glasses, and how much worse can things get, not even halfway through the series? Yes the first half is indeed a beautiful tragedy. (my apologies to "In This Moment")

The 2nd half stands in very strong contrast to this. Weird events, plotholes and contradictions rule here. It's like the story writers got fired and it was a cointoss where to take the anime from there.

Character: The character side of this anime is also a funny thing. You never really know who is the main character, and often wonder why they act as they do. Amanda starts out far in the background, at some point they decide to pull her into the spotlight, and then she fades away again, it's all very strange. And blue, the mystious analgam fighting on his own, he seems rebellous with a backbone and strong will, but later on he turns into a... And so forth.



There is also a character that gets introduced...for what exact reason?? I never figured that out.

All in all, there are a good handful of very nice characters, and they would have gotten top marks if they just stayed that way all through the show.

Value/enjoyment: I have watched this show through once, that is more than enough. I know what happens, and more importantly I couldn't stand watching the ridiculous 2nd half again. This is one of the few shows that get booted right off the hard drive. I did however, have a decent watch from ep 3-12.

My advice is, if you decide to go ahead and watch this show, stop by ep. 12, you have your drama, your tragedy and a few loose ends that can keep your mind busy for a while. Don't torture yourself with the 2nd half.

In the end I excuse the shortness of the review, but I've been out of the loop for a few years, and also a good bashing is full of spoilers, I tried to keep them at a minimum. Comments are very welcome.