Archive for the English Anime Category


My Zhime (Mai Otome) Anime, Volume 2 (English)

November 11th, 2007

My Otome, Volume 2 is as close to a pile of service with a plot attached as is just about possible. In fact, if you only care about the story, you could easily skip the first three episodes of the volume and lose nothing at all.

Once again, my thanks to Ted for his generosity and sponsorship of this review!

The volume starts off with a slightly different spin on the typical “bullying the newcomer” plot complication. Someone has stolen Arika’s uniform and sold it to that bastion of fan perversion, Backstage. After lots of chasing and stuff, Irina comes up with a clever, plausible and all-together incorrect explanation for the missing uniform. This is followed by a “mysterious” sponsor who offers to pay Arika school expenses, as long as she keeps her grades up and writes regularly. I honestly can’t imagine anyone watching this series have the slightest doubt at all who the sponsor is. It’s one of the least mysterious mysteries ever.

Next up, a clever (this is me rolling my eyes) reason for a tentacle monster to appear in the pool, thus giving the writers a chance to use tentacles, bathing suits, bouncing breasts and Yuri in one fetish- and stupidity-filled episode. I’m torn between imagining that the writers hate themselves or their audience more. Can’t quite decide.

In the last episode the plot makes a cameo appearance. We learn that there’s a big church organ in the basement of the castle, that Arika and Mashiro and Nina all seem to know different bits of the same song (was that ever explained? I can’t recall if it was….) and in a surprise move, Arika and Mashiro against all rules, including those of common sense, become bonded as Master and Otome. The ancient Harmonium sounds, surprising everyone on the planet and foretelling some serious shit that is about to happen.

The extra has, wait for it, *more* slimy service. Juliet/Nao gets the girls to wear ridiculous lingerie and crawl all over one another and films it for a quick buck online, one assumes. I like that she has no morals and isn’t burdened by any personal sense of right and wrong. I could even take the random – here, wear this underwear. But the filming. Makes me want to take that knife and hot tar out of the closet and start doing a little service of my own.

Yuri in this volume is primarily Erstin’s feelings for Mopey Nina. I wish that that had been given some depth, but basically it will remain a gag plot complication. However, I still feel that Nina’s reaction to Erstin’s bizarre assumption that Nina was feeling her up in the pool was the single best thing she did in the entire series. Coulda killed her right after that and it would have been fine with me.

Art – 7
Characters – 6
Story – 6
Music – 7
Yuri – 2
Service – 7

Overall – 6

This is probably the low point for the series for me. It felt like they were wasting my time, when they could have been telling a story.





Yuri Anime: My HiME, Volume 7 (English)

November 2nd, 2007

Nothing like finally wrapping up a review of a series I first reviewed 2 years ago. Such a sense of accomplishment, I tell ya. Thanks to Ted for not only making this review possible, but for the nifty gift box, as well! (Daniel, Ted’s ahead of you now – quick buy me more stuff to catch up! LOL) Here’s a link to the nifty box version, if you, dear reader, decide that you want one too. The picture is linked to the DVD-only version. And btw, Bandai – I think the nifty box for the last DVD makes a lot more sense than for the first.

I watched this DVD on the plane. I figured that after sitting through an episode of Baccano my rowmates would be thrilled to have something so tame. lol It kind of had all the bells and whistles people who are not anime fans expect from anime – gratuitous service, bloodless violence, colorful battle scenes and lots and lots of tears.

Yes, this volume covers the final, dramatic battles between the HiME, the Obsidian Prince revealing another absurd plot to create a new world, and all the other stuff we were supposed to care about. But since we really only cared about Natsuki and Shizuru, I’ll jump to that.

I’m not a ShizNat fan, but I really think Natsuki stepped up here. It was the right thing to do and the right way to do it. I’m never going to be happy at Shizuru’s behavior, as logical as it wasn’t. Crazy people are crazy, so her “Since I think you’re rejecting me, I’ll just have to kill you” scans pretty much as what one would expect. But, bleah. I did like the Kiyohime reference with the bell. That was a nice touch. One of the few in this volume. Also, I note that the translaton made Natsuki come down on the Yuri side of the equation, which was different than how I heard it originally – more on the, thanks, I’m happy you felt that way, but I can’t love you that way. I’m fine with this version of it.

In episodes 24 and 25, most of the characters undergo some serious self-reflection. That part was very good. And much of the rest was just typical fighting anime blah blah blah. I was extremely disappointed that, when Reito tells Mai that she won’t be able to call her Child anymore, she didn’t say that she could because the most important person to her now was herself. That *had* been where all the stuff that came before was leading, it was what Takumi said to her and Tate, and it seemed like a REALLY big ball to drop.

I found the “HiME sentai” team unforgivable for three reasons:

1) They were pointless. At least in Otome, they did a thing. In this, they basically rush off to land and watch Mai cry.

2) The loss of an incredible opportunity for Shizuru to restablish her sanity and apologize deeply to everyone for the horror she put them through. Instead the cute face and false apology made me want to scream.

3) Natsuki called them a sentai team. Right.

The MOST pointless thing was the final scene between Mai and Mikoto, where Mai is emotionally brutalized for no good fucking reason whatsoever. I was so livid at that, that I had a hard time not putting my fist through the computer screen.

And the final thing that was simply unforgivable throughout were the eyebrows. WTH was going on with their eyebrows? They were horrible.

The epilogue begins off okay, but quickly devolves to the reset that so bugged me and most of my friends. So much character development had occurred in 24 and 25, that to sort of ignore all that and move right back to the same people behaving the same reeked of pathological denial.

The final moments of the series were sweet, as Mai, Mikoto and Natsuki – all smiling – run off to do something fun for a change and a girl from the middle school walks by with a clueless look. We’ll get to see a lot more of that clueless look in Otome since the girl is Arika. And the epilogue was as disturbing in places as it was cute in others. I thought Haruka and Yukino’s moment was great, and I was particularly fond of Akira slicing the apple at Takumi’s bedside. Miyu and Nao as nuns was just cosplay to set up a gag.

The extras were re-visits with the three stars of the series, Natsuki, Mai and Mikoto, with bump-up in the Yuri for Natsuki, and nice self-recognition for Mai and Mikoto. All about love. No other extras, except for the nifty box.

Ratings:

Art – 7, except for those eyebrows
Story – 7, with points off for all those balls on the floor so 5
Characters – 7, with points off for the step back at reset, 6
Yuri – 6
Service – 6 (My seatmate on the left looked up just as naked Natsuki appeared on screen. She laughed. The guy on my right was as turned far in his seat away from me as physically possible. lol)

Overall – 7, but honestly, it was rife with lost opportunity

I think, if I had to pick one thing I really liked about this final volume, it would be the fights between Childs. They were shiny and colorful.

Oh, and by the way – Daniel, I’m only joking!





Yuri Anime: Simoun, Volume 1 (English)

October 22nd, 2007

So, last week, we were talking about managing expectations in order to enjoy anime more.

And there I was this weekend, staring at Volume 1 of Simoun and wondering – how on earth would I manage my expectations of *this*? ^_^

Here’s the dilemma – I loved Simoun. I named it the best Yuri series of 2006 and I meant it. It was one of the most interesting anime series I have ever watched, and full of so many wonderful points that we can mull over and over to endless annoyance/satisfaction, depending on who you are and what you like.

And I really, really love the folks at Media Blasters. I’m thrilled that they are so genuinely interested in Yuri and want to reach out to the Yuri audience.

But, traditionally, I have not loved MB adaptations. Not because they were bad, but because I thought they were okay, but could have been better. To set the stage, let me explain why it matters so much to me:

I watch an anime with no other expectations than my own, as I said previously. In most cases I can understand some, if not most or all, of what is being said when I watch a series raw. And by doing so, I establish my own understanding of the series. When/if I watch a series subbed, I use it to fill in holes I have, and also to compare my understanding to the subbers’ interpretation. When, after all that, I have loved a series, I want to be able to wholeheartedly suggest it to other people – not only other people who are also already fans, but to people who may not have ever seen the original. And for these last, I need the translations to be all that. Otherwise, what I see as awesome, may come off as being incomprehensible, or uninteresting. Most people who watch an anime are not me. I read fast, seeing the subtitles almost as a subliminal. If the words in the translation don’t match my understanding of what’s being said it jars me. But for a person who relies on that subtitle for the entire meaning of the story, if the words are lazily written, or difficult to follow – or plain wrong, then that person is getting a whole chunk of the story taken away from them. Like having a huge black line through the art – sure you can watch around it, but it’s hard to enjoy.

Okay, that all having been said, let me cut to the chase – overall, I think Media Blasters did a very good job with Simoun. Better than usual, and much better than I expected.

Phew.

It’s not perfect, by any stretch, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

Okay, first things first. I need to thank the folks at Media Blasters with all my thanks. They didn’t just send me a copy of Simoun to review – they sent me the very first copy to be printed in the US. And the cover art is signed by everyone who worked on it. There aren’t any smilies that express the sort of thing I felt when I got that DVD. So, my thanks and hugs to everyone at MB. ^_^

I’m going to start with the nitpicky things, starting with the one thing that has GOT to be fixed, or I’ll go mad, and working my way down in urgency until we go into the good, so we can all have a happy end. :-)

The one thing that has GOT to be fixed, is Rodoreamon’s name. For some reason they’ve got it as Rotreamon, which is just wrong. I double-checked the Japanese official website and the Japanese credits – Rodoreamon. Definitely “do” there, not “to”. It looks wrong and everyone definitely says “Rodo”, so please fix that!!! It just looks bad and doesn’t match what they are saying.

Okay, that’s out of my system. So. The names. I appreciated the consistency in the way names were written. In every case, without exception, the final “u” was removed from names. So, Anubituf, Kaim, Aer. I have no trouble with the transliterations they chose, although I’d have been more literal with Alti, instead of Alty. But okay. However, for Aeru’s name, I’d have left the “u” in, because later on, this is going to be an issue. Her name is pronounced “Ah-eh-ru,” not “Ah-er.” However, as this is not a major thing and it matches well enough, as well as being consistent, I’ll drop it. All the long vowels are written with the somewhat old-fashioned symbols “ā” or “ō” so “Wapōrif” and “Māj”. This leads to one really unfortunate typo. The first time the characters discussed doing a Māj, the “a” is left out and what we see is M_j. Erk. (Later, in the extras, Rodoreamon’s name is misspelled, as “Rorteamon.” Two typos on one disk is really not so good. Guys – ask me to to a last disk check. I know the series, the names, the words. Seriously. I’ll be glad to look it over. I do editing on the side.)

The translation. Overall, I think this might be the best translation I’ve ever seen from MB. They left in the honorifics which, in this case, are primarily “-sama.” Can I just tell you how NICE it is to *see* Alty say “Para-sama” when she’s saying it? Later, in the extras, “-chan” is used as well. I’d have loved to see a screen still with an explanation of the honorifics for the potential viewers who don’t know what they mean, but I am so excited to have the honorifics at all, I can barely contain myself. lol

People’s titles are translated. High Priestess, Governor, Captain. No problem. Country names are not translated, but left as they sound. Personally – I liked that. Thumbs up.

Extra points for making everything they say totally comprehensible. If you were one of the people who saw the extremely incomprehensible fansubs of the first three episodes by a particular group, you’ll know why this is so important – the first three episodes are *crucial* to our understanding of WTF is going on. Making it all make sense is not easy and I think they did a really good job. In fact, until the last episode on the disk, I think the translation was very tight. At the end, there was a bit that I felt got lax and fell back into that “this is what they meant, so it’s close enough.” Or maybe it’s just something about the way Dominura speaks that made the Translator want to make her a bit more…casual. (She certainly comes off an an odd bird. If it was done on purpose, then fine. If it was laziness, then bzzt.)

Also, I’d really like to see a Romaji version of the opening and ending themes. It’s pretty usual for anime and fans like it, because we always end up trying to learn them anyway. Alternate bwtween English and Romaji, or run them at the same time as. Either way, I think it would add some value.

The technicals. Well, the usual thing from Media Blasters – no inserts, which made me sad, because I had asked to have inserts of the cover art that we lost as mini-posters or something. This disk contains episodes 1-6, which is *very* good, but since the Japanese DVDs were two-episode disks, we lost two pieces of cover art in the process. I love the cover art – it’s hugely service-y, provocative and sexy. I had really hoped we get them as inserts. But hey – 6 episodes to a disk is *nice*. The whole series in 5 disks would be awesome. Especially for the price – $20 at Amazon ($15 if you pre-order). That’s just over $3/episode. No complaints here. Especially as I’ll probably be buying some Simoun for holiday presents. ^_^ There’s no dub track (although I know that some people like the dubs, and some people felt that they wouldn’t watch it without a dub, the idea makes me shudder, personally) and only the one audio track. Again, I passed on the idea of a 5.1 audio track, so you can’t say they didn’t know fans wanted it. I wouldn’t mind it myself – makes the music, which is so wonderful, even better.

The disk itself is very pretty. Huh, how about that? It surprised me, because I don’t usually notice the disks. This has to be up there for one of the nicest looking DVDs I own. ^_^

And, the extras. As usual, MB has included the extras from the Japanese volumes, which I like a lot. The first is an excruciating interview with the VAs for Aer and Neviril. And the “MC”, who is a horrible lollipop with eyes stuck on and a computer-modulated voice makes it just that much more horrible. Seriously, just skip that extra. The second extra is much, much better. It’s a trivia and quiz game special, pairing up, well, Pairs. Hosted by Morinaga Rika, Mamina’s seiyuu (who is incredibly cute in a punk-y kind of way, with an unrealistically silly voice) each Pair vies for points on how well they match answers to questions, and know trivia from the anime. I was absolutely hysterical during this segment. I had already seen it raw, but I had missed a lot that went on in the background. It was darn funny. I hope we get more of this kind of thing. And bizarrely, when Toyoguchi Megumi is referred to as “Megu-‘nee” it was translated as that. (Well, “Meg-nee”, anyway.) So…erm, why was Alty’s “Kaim-‘neesan” translated as “Big Sister Kaim?” No clue.

Last up. The actual anime. I was so certain that I’d be disappointed watching Simoun this time around. Remember how we retrofit memories? I fully expected to find all sort of flaws with my memory that Simoun was teh awesome. You know what? I was wrong. God DAMN this is a good anime! Two minutes into it and I was glued to the TV and remained that way for all six episodes. Then I was sad that I didn’t have any more to watch. The music remains brilliant. The story remains fascinating. I love the art, the detailed CGI over not-at-all detailed watercolor. I love the ridiculous contrast between our beautiful peaceful sun-filled country and the enemy’s pollution-ridden world of darkness and filth. I love The Arcus Prima, the Simoun, the fact that Morinas is a tease and the fact that all the seiyuu are women. (The wife reminds me that I also still hate the character designs, especially Neviril’s sex-doll mouth. Which is true, but you can’t have everything.) After more than a year, I still love Simoun.

In terms of Yuri, there’s a lot of service. :-) Lots of kisses. And, while it was pretty subtle for an anime, girl-loving LFs of every gender got their RDA of panty and breast shots. But seriously, Yuri in this volume = Neviril x Amuria. The story revolves around what could have been, what happened and how Neviril can’t move on. She *must* be a lesbian, she’s unhealthily obsessing about her ex. :-) And surely we can’t ignore poor Kaim and her not at all unhealthy interest in Parietta. She gets points for trying *really* hard to make Parietta to look away from Neviril. And it’s not really her fault that she fails. And then there’s Morinas and her obvious, immediate, interest in Wapōrif. Can’t say that she’s just interested in him for his great personality…not yet, anyway. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 7
Yuri – 5
Service – 6

Overall – 8

Translation – 7
Adaptation – 7
Technicals – 7
Extras – 6

Should you get it? Hell yeah. Then email the folks at Media Blasters and let them know what they did right – and what they can improve. Let’s see if we can make Volume 2 even better.

Media Blasters responds: In regards to the artwork, we don’t always get the chance to use all of the artwork we receive, especially since we have a disproportionate number of release volumes to the Japanese version. It’s possible we can make an art gallery as an extra on one of the disks…. In terms of translations…the name translations were given to us by the licensor, so we didn’t have a lot of room for interpretation.

This is Erica again: I’m not surprised about the name thing. Thanks, Media Blaster representative, for commenting. It always helps to know what’s going on in the background, so we don’t feel like we’re out of the loop. ^_^





Yuri Anime: My Hime, Volume 6 (English)

October 18th, 2007

You wake up on the wrong side of the bed, stub your toe on the dresser and almost choke on your cereal. When you sit down to watch anime under circumstances like that, the *last* thing in the world you want is something happy and carefree. No, you want to wallow neck deep in someone’s life that sucks more than yours does.

Welcome to My HiME, Volume 6.

Despite the uptick on the misery quotient, this is my favorite of all of the volumes for this series. And my deepest thanks to Ted who provided it for review and the entertainment of all Yuri-kind.

Mai’s life isn’t getting any better and now, as Nagi predicted ever so snarkily, the HiME find themselves turning on one another. Nagi sort of misread the feminine mind there when he told them that the winner gets Highlander-esque powers. Because they didn’t really care about that. But once a whole bunch of manipulative assholes dig their fingers into a situation like this, and the natural inability of the human under pressure to think clearly, with the addition of hormones and outside stress levels, you just know someone is going down.

And down they go.

Despite the losses from our ranks in this volume, there are some really great moments.

One of the best has got to be when Mai and Mikoto accidentally witness Akira and Takumi in an embarrassingly tender moment. We know Akira is a girl, but they don’t, so it has a little gender-bendiness to add to the titillation and cringe-making cuteness.

Of course, for Yuri fans, this volume also offers the horribly over-used, abused and mused upon scenes where we learn, at last, what we already knew – that Shizuru is very gay for Natsuki. Really? We’re shocked. SHOCKED, I tell ya. We also get to see Shizuru jump all sorts of aquariums of sharks and go from competent and crushy to ragingly mad rapist and psychotic murderer. Hey, but she’s so cool – clearly Natsuki’s an idiot for passing that up.

(Which makes me wonder why there was never any hue, cry or outrage that Shizuru was the tedious psychotic lesbian stereotype? When Sharon Stone did it, everyone screamed in anger. Why did everyone continue to idolize Shizuru when she went batshit crazy? I know why *I* liked her. She has a polearm and I like psychotic women. But that’s me. Surely that can’t apply to every nutball in Yuri fandom? ^_^)

This is probably not a spoiler anymore (and all my posts are at least partial spoilers, and I will say some mildly spoilery stuff after this as well,) but I imagine that someone will get pissed at me for writing it (again). So if you do not want massive spoilers, stop reading here and pick up again after the second set of thre asterisks.

***

Some extra spoiler space for the weak of constitution

As much as Shizuru’s descent into madness is interestingly animated, with nice background music, lots of purple lighting and a cool polearm. It is Yukino’s defeat and Haruka’s reaction that makes this volume purest win.

Shizuru defeats Yukino heartlessly (and somewhat pointlessly, as well. Yukino was never a threat to Natsuki in any way. But try reasoning with a madwoman….)

As we all knew, Yukino’s most important person is Haruka and immediately, she begins to disappear. Of course, she has no idea at all what’s going on, but she gets all the points in the world from for forging ahead and punching Shizuru up the conk as she fades.

If that was not your favorite moment, well, then, you’re not coming over for lunch anytime soon. That’s all I’m saying. ^_^

That moment was so win, that clearly the writers realized that they had made the wrong person in that pair a HiME. They corrected the oversight for Mai Otome. ^_^

Extra spoiler space on this side for symmetry.

***

Other stuff happens too. We delve into mostly every HiME’s backstory and find that each one is essentially human, and therefore manipulable. And Miyu gets resurrected, because, we need Ayanami Rei clones in order for this to be a real anime. Also Mashiro turns out to be something other than what she seems.

The DVD extras are sort of interesting and sort of not. The first is a long, slow, lingering look at an inexplicably bound and hunkified Reito. No hollow-chested lad here – he’s so muscular he looks western. I imagine that this was service for the three gay guys who watched this series ’cause let’s face it, no one but me likes the hunky guys – everyone else seems to go gaga for the hollow-chested lads. Blecch. Next up is a retrospective by Natsuki about how much she treasures Shizuru’s friendship. She is clearly talking about friendship and nothing more, but that hasn’t stopped hordes of ShizNat fans from pointing out that she is also talking about Shizuru and not, say, her mother. The last extra is a bunch of words randomly spoken over pictures of Midori and Mai in bikinis.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Yuri – 7
Service – 7

Overall – 7

So, sure, we all get beat over the head with the misery stick and sure our “best lesbian candidate goes nuts (along with mostly everyone else) and sure the rewards for lesbian love are death, destruction and despair.

But hey, it’s a great volume! ^_^;





Yuri Anime: Battle Athletes Victory, Volume 7

October 15th, 2007

Properly speaking, Volume 7 of Battle Athletes is the penultimate volume, but realistically, it’s the conclusion of the story. Everything that has been masquerading as the plot for this bundle of clichés is tied up neatly here. In other words, we finally learn who wins the title of Cosmos Beauty.

Did we, in fact, have any doubt who would win? All we needed to do was watch the first episode and note that our protagonist was not only the least talented, least deserving and least competent person in the show, but also the most annoying, to recognize that she would of course, be the winner. I’ve talked a lot about the idiot savant hero/ine here. Akari is pretty much the epitome of the type. Her mad skills only kick in when she’s boosted by an outside stimulus. Thankfully, there are many recent anime that go the other route and show us the hero/ines practicing until they drop. Because I am not naturally talented at anything, and everything I have ever become even mediocre at has been because of long hours of practice, it’s no surprise I prefer that latter stories to the former. :-)

But.

Battle Athletes was from way back in the stone age, about a decade ago. It is decidedly old school in its power-ups – as well as in animation, music, voice acting and, well pretty much everything. As it also is rife with Yuri, I’m inclined to be generous. Plus, if you’re watching Battle Athletes in the first place, you gotta know to manage expectations anyway – this is not and never will be high art. :-) (Remind me to share my recent moment of satori about expectations and anime with you all sometime.)

So, we have two decidedly Yuri-riffic couples facing off in the finals of the CB tournament. The two best athletes evar versus two newcomers. In their defeat, Lahrri and Mylandah find each other, and get a nice little backstory which ties them neatly together, leaving Akari and Kris to have last minute angst at/about one another. In the manga, this was fueled by Akari learning that her father chose Kris over her, for no other reason that that he is (apparently) a victory-obsessed psychopath. In the anime, we learn that Kris cannot run the day chosen for the race, due to religious observances. Hmm…which is punchier plot complication? Hard to decide. At least the manga father wasn’t “Mr. Miracle” the chocolate hound. (Which always reminds me of a very evil drawing in the Jesus Drug doujinshi for this series. It’s just not right that that image is burned into my head…)

In the end, of course Kris gains dispensation to run. At last, Akari and she face off in a final battle.

Because it’s so much better, let me talk about the manga here. (And before I do, let me just remind you that the manga is LONG out of print, so please don’t ask me where you can find it. I got my copy at Book-Off, the used manga store, and I have also seen it for sale at Mandarake used book store in Tokyo. If you have a buyer, you can try looking on Yahoo JP auctions or the Amazon JP marketplace. Good luck.)

In the manga, Akari and Kris tie for first. Then they kiss in front of everyone in the whole world. Having achieved her dream, Kris returns to the Beginners to become a priestess.

In the anime, Akari wins and Kris disappears to return to the Beginners to become a priestess. Akari, having just been crowned, runs after her, catches up to Kris and her cow. Kris gently kisses her goodbye.

Read those two paragraphs again. Can you *guess* which one I prefer? I think you can.

And that’s pretty much it. Akari is Cosmos Beauty and she beat her mother’s time. Wow. Amazing. :-)

Oh, wait, here come the aliens! We’re under attack!

End of volume.

There were so many ways this volume could have been *brilliant*. Instead it was all right. Although Mylandah x Lahrri = win. And they will continue to be win through the farce that will be Volume 8. There really was no Akari x Kris, except in the hearts and minds of fans. Bloody shame if you ask me. But that too will come back like the bad penny it is in Volume 8. Because we can never have enough of our old friend old-school UST, i.e., “unresolved sexual tension.” (Remember, this was a staple for all anime of the time – not just Yuri or Yaoi. It won’t make it less annoying, but it makes it seem less unfair.)

So, for a resolution, it kind of wasn’t. I’d REALLY like to see this anime remade, this time with the right ending. ;-) Kanon, pfft. I want to see an updated BAV.

Ratings:

Art – practice profiles please – 6
Story – clinging to cliches is cheesy – 6
Characters – alas and alack, a lack – 7
Yuri – opportunity and motive, but no crime – 5
Service – as you like it – 5

Overall – slightly better than the sum of its parts, minus one for the cow – 6

For what it is, which is incredibly silly old-school junkiness from Mediaworks, Battle Athletes is pleasantly entertaining, without being good. ;-)