Darknives Anime & Manga Blog

^OVA
Kite Liberator

Studio: Arms, Digital Frontier, Studio Trico
Director: Yasuomi Umetsu
Length: 1 OVA
Year: 2008
Genre: Action, Science-Fiction

Synopsis: Years after the events that transpired in Kite, Sawa’s whereabouts are a mystery. During this time, rumors of a new killer have begun to circulate the city. They call her the Angel of Death, an unfeeling assassin who eliminates her targets with grace and precision, leaving only a flurry of feathers as her calling card. What the public is unaware of is the fact that this notorious hitman is a actually a polite young lady named Monaka. Like her spiritual predecessor, Monaka has lost most of her family, and her father’s duty as an astronaut keeps hims practically worlds apart. However, they are close despite the physical distances and Orudo promised his daughter that he would return. Until then, daily life for the timid and somewhat clumsy Monaka involves mostly school and her part time job as a waitress, but her nature completely changes once she receives an assignment.
(from Animenewsnetwork.com)

It all starts in a space ship where a scientist named Doi is testing a new food that stops bone from weakening in space.

In this station is also Monaka’s father. Here we learn a little bit about her family background.

Basically the story is about teenage assassins who do justice by their own hands like vigilantes. This time a girl, Monaka, is the assassin. She mainly hunts people related to sex crimes.

Then, in space the new food testing goes wrong (who would imagine that?) and her father becomes a monster. The survivors return to earth and unknowingly bring the monster too.

Monaka ends up being hired to kill the monster. So.. I’m not sure if she’s supposed to be a vigilant working for the good of society or just a contract killer. Anyway, the story is basically just an excuse for gun fighting. Which isn’t bad, I went watching this, expecting just a good action OVA.

Still, there are some strange details in the story, like Monaka’s friend in the restaurant. The anime gives lots of little hints at her life and stuff like that, creating some mystery around her but, in the end the plot doesn’t explore that in any way. Maybe she’s a character from past Kytes..

At a certain point, there’s some reference to past assassins. Although this plot supposedly has nothing to do with the previous Kites, it still takes place in the same universe some years after.

After all I had read about kite I was surprised to actually find it a normal anime with some comedy and light moments.

Character design is a little out of ordinary but, if you like this particular art, then rest assured it’s well done with lots of details.

The animation style is a little unusual too. This really sticks out during action scenes. It’s still a cool style, even if it seems a little unnatural and a good break away from the more conventional styles you see everyday.

The camera angle’s also had some interesting work. Some parts the camera just focus on a character and follows it at centey while the background and everything else just moves around it. This effect looks really good. It’s king of a similar style to the one used by Peter Chung on Dark Fury, something they call the "American anime style" less cinematic and such, like a video game. But it’s just some scenes in the movie anyway.

As for the CGI, it’s some of the best made I’ve seen in an anime. The spaceship part, specially, looked really real, like it was from a live action movie.

Overall, an enjoyable anime but, not anything special.

As side note, I realized almost at the end that Gaga was voiced by the same actor as Bleach’s Ichigo, Masakazu Morita.

Final Fantasy VII
Last Order

Type: OVA
Studio: Square Enix / Madhouse
Year: 2005

I few weeks ago, I finally decided to see for my self what all that Final Fantasy VII hype was all about. I had never been a Final Fantasy fan, I guess I skipped the RPGs when I had a PSone. Still, I eventually played the 5 first games when they were remade. I also watched the Advent Children movie a while ago and loved the action but, I didn’t understand anything of what was going on for obvious reasons. So, I decided it was time to experience Final Fantasy VII. I’m following the chronology and started with Crisis Core. Now that I finished it, it’s time for Last Order.

So, Last Order is basically a telling of two past events that happened during Crisis Core. It goes into much greater detail. and shows what was going on with a lot more characters. Basically, Zack’s running away with Cloud and the Turks are searching for them. Meanwhile, Tseng, in command of the operations, remembers the Niblheim event which caused all of this.

Noticeable right from the beginning is the the music. It uses the same instrumental songs as the Crisis Core game. They are good enough and serve their purpose. It also helps feeling a connection with the game.

The character art style isn’t particularly to my liking but, it’s good and there’s a lot of attention to detail. You can recognize all characters immediately.

The scenery and colors are also very good and always have a dark mood. I liked it more than in the game.

The animation is really good, what you would expect from an OVA, specially with MAD House and Square Enix involved.

The story doesn’t really reveal anything new that Crisis Core hadn’t already. I liked to see it go through to Zack’s final fight. It was short but, entertaining.

The final episode starts with a flashback showing how Isaac first knew of Tactical Sorcerer. I loved the first night scenes, specially the town seen from high above, awesome art and shadowing animation.

There’s a scene showing Isaac’s superior having some suspicious phone call. There are to more attacks and while Isaac is in one of them, his sister is killed in the other. The times correspond to the ones his superiors were talking about.

Rachel’s death wasn’t very shocking, the series didn’t have much time for me to bond with the character. Still, it was unexpected and a well done scene, with just some hints to her death.

This turn of events completely changes Isaac’s focus, from killing Steinberg to killing his superior and the other terrorists. It’s a really simple business net, with few people. Isaac kills his superior and quickly finds the terrorists and kills them too.

He’s cold, there’s no more reason to live for him. He goes to where Steinberg is taking a mission. He’s still looking for revenge but, deep down he’s probably hoping to die.

I was disapoited with the ending. The big terrorist conspiracy ended up being somthing really small and kind of unimportant. There was no real development between Steinberg and Kapel, just an understanding that Kapel doesn’t seem to blame him.

There were some philosophies in the end concerning his sins as a Sorcerer. But, only some questions left in the air. There was no real conclusion to his story and they just continue to live and doing their jobs.

Overall, it’s not a bad series but, neither a very good one. I liked it more for the animation and production, although I’m not very fond of the character art. Also, being such a small running series, it wasn’t boring.

Nerin goes seek advice from miss Filisis, she’s a very famous Tactical Sorcerer, and learns of Ray and Kapel’s story. Ray is prepared to accept death at any time to atone for his sins.

The production quality continues on a high level. Drawings and animation fluidity is pretty good, which makes watching this series very pleasant.1

Another demon incident occurs on a power facility. There’s two demons this time and they seem more powerful than normal, Count Class. One is actually funny, asking "Why? Why? It’s a mystery" lol. These incidents are being caused by terrorists.

Tactical Sorcerers are sent. Both Hammond and Ray are broth to deal with them. They end up arguing about their different opinions on Tactical Sorcerers.

Ray finds one but he’s attacked and gets buried. One of the demons breaks out and starts attacking the police.

Ray is near death, dreaming about his past. From his memories and Hammonds words, we can figure that Rays father was a legendary Tactical Sorcerer and that he ended up becoming a demon. Ray killed him and got his armor. Nerin does a very emotional speech about death and atonement. She can’t accept Ray dying like this.

Rays is in pretty bad shape, but Nerin speech makes him want to live again. He uses an illegal spell to gain strength again. He gets extra powerful and takes the demons out in no time. He’s using some kind of accelerator spell. It will probably have bad results on his body.

Hammond has figured Ray’s past in a bad way. He’ll probably want revenge now.

This is a new horror-fantasy OVA series by Feel, the same studio of Da Capo. It’s going to be 3 episodes long and has already been licensed by Manga Entertainment.

The year is 1899 and a new experiment has been done that allows humans to use magic. But, when a humans uses magic for too long we will lose his mind and become a monster with special powers. Strait Jackets are created in order to fight this monsters, but they can turn into monster themselves.

Nerin is somekind of police officer. She eventually gets caught in an incident with a monster in a hospital. Since all Sorcerers, Strait Jackets, are on missions at the time she is forced to ask for help for an unlicensed one who happened to be near.

Everytime Sorcerers appear there’s a scene that involves some kind of monster human which seems to be trapped. This probably is the demon that appears in everyone who uses magic and that will take over the persons body once they reach their limit in using magic.

There’s also some kind of terrorists are attempting to cause this monster incidents on purpose. They get angry at the fact that Rayott was at the scene in the hospital and it seems they are plotting to kill him.

Rayott ends up getting contracted by Nerin to become an official Sorcerer.

The production values are top notch. The animation is great, specially during the fights, and backgrounds are really beautiful.

I really liked this episode, but I think this series is going to waste a lot of potential by making just 3 episodes.