Probably because it's their 5th anniversary issue, NTUSA have provided us
with five sample episodes this month rather than the usual two or three.
So, first up is:
"Venus Versus Virus".
It would seem that a 'virus' is actually some sort of demon creature that
hunts people and kills them. Some people have the ability to see these
viruses, most don't. Lucia and Sumire are two girls who can see the
viruses and are part of a group whose aim is to destroy them, which they
do by shooting the virus with a bullet filled with an anti-virus serum.
Overall this was a good episode, it introduced the main characters and
gave an indication of what they did and how they worked. It also gave a
few hints that there was more to what was going on than is apparent.
This series certainly looks if it could develop into something quite
interesting. If you like girls with guns mixed with supernatural
spookiness it might be worth giving this series a try.
Next up was:
"Tokyo Majin".
What a load of rubbish! Here we have a group of people fighting a whole
crowd of corpses, living dead and a weird bloated spider-like thing. The
focus of the action switches from place to place so rapidly that it's
hard to work out if there is any coherent continuity to the story. This
mishmash of supernatural nonsense is just totally incomprehensible.
So, moving swiftly on we come to:
"Rozen Maiden Traumend".
Coming in at episode 3 is perhaps not the best plan as I had absolutely
no idea what was going on. From what little I'd read about Rozen Maiden
I got the idea that the series had a rather dark storyline, but it looks
more like some sort of lighthearted comedy about a guy who for some
reason or other is sharing his house with four rather hyper-active dolls.
While it was quite good fun to watch, I didn't find much to commend it.
So we come to number four:
"Hell Girl".
This is episode two of the series, but it was easy to pick up what was
happening, and what was happening was a young girl being terrorised by a
stalker. She 'solves' her problem by entering into a contract with Hell
Girl who will find the stalker and ferry his soul to hell. But the
contract has the usual terms and conditions. From the 'next episode
preview' it would seem that each episode is another case where someone
enters a contract with Hell Girl to extract vengeance on their behalf.
Hell Girl is a quite stylish story and if you like horror films you'll
probably enjoy it.
Finally there was:
"Flag".
This is the story of a special military unit whose mission is to recover
a symbolic flag that has been stolen. Interestingly, although this is
episode three there is no feeling of not knowing what has happened before
and the story is presented clearly. The story is basically told through
the eyes of a photographer who has been assigned to the unit to document
it's mission to recover the flag. One curious aspect of this is that
most of the episode is shown as seen through the viewfinder of a digital
camera, and although unusual, this approach works remarkably well. If
you like military action series and want one that's a little bit
different it might be worth checking this one out.
== Peter ==
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"Was it all a dream? No it really happened."
(Hitomi Kanzaki: Escaflowne)
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