Digimon Data Squad: Collection One Review (Part 2: The Show)

And here’s that second review for Digimon Data Squad: Collection One, just as promised. This time I’ll be a little more brief at least - there’s not near as much I can say on just these episodes, without spoiling, which is why most of my reviews have been on full series rather than parts like this.

For starters, as this is a dub-only release, I’ll pretty much stick to talking about the dub, with only a few comparisons to what was changed from the original version, what I remember anyway.

Digimon Data Squad is the dub of the fifth installment in the Digimon franchise, known as Digimon Savers in it’s original Japanese form. It covers the adventures of DATS once they’re joined by a young man named Marcus Damon. Marcus had been just a street fighter, aiming to be the world’s best ‘Ultimate Fighter’. One day, after clearing out a group of punks in his area, he ends up fighting a rouge Digimon named Agumon. An agent from DATS named Yoshi tries to stop them, so they end up having to flee the scene. Having lost their fight however, Agumon decides to become an ‘employee’ to Marcus, calling him ‘Boss’ and expecting him to provide him food and shelter. When another Digimon attacks a burger joint in town, Agumon gets the blame as he was the only signal active at the time. Yoshi attempts again to take in Agumon, but when it’s revealed it was another Digimon entirely, Marcus and Agumon set out to fight it together. From punching the Digimon himself, Marcus unlocks the power hidden deep within, his DNA Charge! With it, and a Digivice tossed to him by a mysterious old man, Agumon is able to digivolve into GeoGreymon and defeat the other digimon. Yoshi takes the two back to DATS, to get them to join up and help the fight against rogue Digimon.

The story is pretty simple to follow from there - Marcus joins the squad and takes on rogue Digimon at every turn, along with Yoshi and her partner Lalamon, and a genius named Thomas H. Norstein and his parter Gaomon. Just like the other Digimon shows, this one starts off with a series of stories that are pretty well stand-alone. The cases the squad deals with range from a pair of burglars using a Drimogemon for their heists, to a singer with a Keramon that changes charts to make him appear as the top selling artist.

Also, just like in previous shows, each character of the main team (Marcus, Thomas, and Yoshi) all get episodes that focus more on them than the other two. Really, as you watch it, you’ll notice that lots of this show seems very similar in tone to the previous installments. When the show was in production in Japan, the decision to aim at the same (only now older) fanbase as before was made. That’s one reason that we have yet another leader with an Agumon partner, in reference to the original show.

There’s two main differences that you’ll notice between Data Squad and the previous shows. First off is the fact that even while he’s the leader, Marcus is anything but a Goggle Boy. Even beyond the obvious fact that he doesn’t wear goggles, his personality is quite different from the normal lead in these shows. Rather than being, for the most part, happy and out-going, Marcus is incredibly disagreeable and rather violent, turning to his fists more often than his head.

Though, he does still share a few common traits to a Digimon lead, in that he never gives up, and is determined to protect his friends and family from harm.

The other big difference you’ll notice is the art style. While the previous shows all had a style that was very much it’s own, Data Squad looks pretty much like your standard Shonen anime. This isn’t a bad thing really, but it can be a bit jarring if you’re expecting something that looks just like the previous shows.

Also just like the previous shows, this one has had a fair amount of edit’s done to make it ‘acceptable for kids in the US’. There’s nothing too drastic done though, except for one instance in a later episode on the set. Long-story short, so as not to spoil, a certain bomb-based Digimon is turned into an orange, and rather than threatening to blow things up, he threatens to flood the place with juice…yeah…barring that, the show is pretty much just how it should be.

Oh, and also, there’s some name changes for the main characters, but like usual, it’s nothing too major. Here’s some examples, using the main three human characters.

Original Japanese Name --- English Dub Name

Damon Masaru --- Marcus Damon

Fujieda Yoshino --- Yoshi Fujieda

Tohma H. Norstein --- Tohmas H. Norstein

As you can see, it’s per-the-norm for name changes in Digimon. While this is a sin to lots of fans, it doesn’t really bother me, so long as it’s something as simple as Taichi to Tai, or Masaru to Marcus.

You’ll hear tons of voices that you recognize too. Jeff Nimoy, the director from the original two seasons of Digimon, has returned, and he’s re-united much of the cast from all four previous shows, to keep the feel the same. Colleen O’Shaughnessy, Crispin Freeman, Brianne Siddall, Steve Blum, Melissa Fahn, Derek Stephen Prince, and many many more - They’re all here in roles as both humans and Digimon, along with new to the franchise but long-time friend of Nimoy, Quinton Flynn. Sadly, Joshua Seth is nowhere to be found in the episodes on this set or later on either, as he seems to have retired from voice-over.

All in all, this set is a solid start into the show, letting you know whether or not you’re ready to join back into the Digimon fold completely, or if you’re just going to live with your fond memories. Again, it’s available at a number of places online, so grab it if you get a chance guys. You more than likely won’t be sorry - just don’t go in expecting an experience quite as good as the previous installments.

I give Digimon Data Squad: Collection One a 7 out of 10. DNA Charge!

Rant, rant, rant! (Bleach).

(And yes. I did pick this title off of the old segment that previously ran on Hey, Answerman!)

Read vol. 28 yesterday and I'm getting tired of Bleach. The constant introduction of new characters (double digits in this volume) is a real drag on the series. They're in and they're out. Not really having much time to bring anything positive to the plate, but just enough to make it seem so mundane.

Something that the other two big Shonen Jump series are good at is building up the stakes. One Piece starts out with fighting some relative small fry and it keeps on getting more and more epic as it goes on. Never overextending itself. Knowing what works when it comes to providing sympathy for protagonists and hatred for antagonists. Same with Naruto. Bleach just rinses and repeats the same scenario over and over. " Oh, let's infiltrate a foreign world, one that has a bunch of minions to do the head honcho's bidding, to rescue our friend. We'll eventually split up so we can drag it all out even more too!"

And why does Kubo hate drawing background art? He's great at drawing the characters themselves in different action poses and whatnot, but he just sketches a few lines in the background and sends it off to be published. But, that's only a minor annoyance compared to how he handles his panels. He constantly uses one panel to cover up 2/3 of a page. 2 page spreads are a lot more frequent here than I've ever seen in any other manga. A real lack of content. I might say that he's just tired with his creation, but he's been doing this for a while. With that in mind, I just think that he's been unable to grow as an author.

Sad to say that I'm going to keep on reading. I've already invested 28 volumes into this series, so I might as well see how this train ends up crashing and burn.

Digimon Data Squad: Collection One Review (Part 1: The Set)

I’m very proud to bring you a review of this release, as it’s something that many of us fans have been waiting on for a LONG time. That’s right, a legitimate DVD release of episodes of a Digimon series in the US.

To cover why this is such a big deal, here’s the whole saga in a nutshell. Back when the first Digimon series was brought over, by Saban way prior to the takeover by Disney, there were two or three official VHS releases put out. However, due to low sales figures, the first season (or Digimon Adventure) was never fully released here. As far as I know no VHS were put out for season 2 (or Digimon Adventure 02), and the only tape I know of for season 3 (Digimon Tamers), was more of a ‘Best Of’ release, rather than the episodes in order. No VHS were ever put out for season 4 (Digimon Frontier) either, though by this point it has long been in the hands of Disney.

So prior to this release, there was no way to have any Digimon for yourself, outside of having had taped it off of TV back when it was airing, or importing either the original Japanese boxsets (which on top of requiring a region-free DVD player, is very pricey at around $500 a set) or the UK boxsets (which are incredibly hard to find, I myself have never been able to find them for certain). And there were never any DVD releases, barring the compilation of both Adventure movies and the first Adventure 02 movie, released here as ‘Digimon: The Movie’.

As you can imagine, when rumors of this set first started circulating the internet about a year or so ago, it was quite the buzz among the fanbase. It didn’t help that the main citation for this release for quite a while was nothing more than a Wiki article. On top of Wiki not being the best source to trust as a default rule, it certainly wouldn’t have been the first time it mislead us on Digimon (seeing as how the rumor of the Digimon Adventure V-Tamer 01 and Digimon Next manga being picked up for a US release hasn’t come true yet, it can be assumed that Wiki article was indeed false).

But luckily for us, this time it came true! I’m not sure what hand Disney played in this as the rights holder, but Well Go USA was able to give us a Digimon set. While Data Squad (or Savers in the original Japanese version) is possibly my least favorite of the franchise, I still had to pick this up as soon as I could find it. Sadly it took a while, but I finally got myself a copy. My thoughts?

Beyond the obvious thrill and awesomeness that come into this just for it being Digimon on DVD, I was pretty impressed by this release. It’s by no means a dream set, but it’s definitely a nice, solid release that was more than most of us expected. The case itself is what I think they call a digipak - Think more along the lines of the DBZ Season Sets put out by FUNi than the Naruto ones put out by Viz. In other words, instead of opening like a book, it unfolds to reveal the discs after you’ve removed the slip cover.

Pictures of the set from basically every angle I could come up with, in addition to a nice gallery of screenshots, will be shown in a follow-up post here. For now however, before I get into how the viewing itself was, I’d like to cover some of the bonus features for this release. All one of them - a nice little booklet with character descriptions, episode summaries, and some nice little artwork.
But first, to give you an idea of the story of this series without getting too spoilerific, if you didn’t catch this one on TV, here’s the description off the back of the slip cover.

“This first ever Digimon Data Squad Collection One set contains 13 full episodes from the newest Digimon series. Follow the adventures of Marcus, a cool junior high school student, and his favorite Digimon Agumon as they investigate their way through the Digital World battling Digital Monsters in exciting and different situations. Marcus' best friends Thomas and Yoshi with their Digimon partners Gaomon and Lalamon join in the adventures and help challenge and battle strong opponents along the way. Experience the newest Digimon series like never before.”

The inclusion of this booklet, mixed with it’s contents and the overall design of this set, makes me really think that someone on the design team from Well Go USA is a fan of the DBZ season sets. It just oozes the same feel as those, it’s hard to miss, unless it’s just me for some reason. The booklet has a few pages of nice art from the show, and some that was for promoting the show I think, all for you to oggle. The main event of course is the character bios and episode summaries. I don’t want to give you all of them, so as to not ruin the fun when you get the set yourself, but here’s a sample of the character bios, one for a human and one for their Digimon partner.

“MARCUS DAMON”
“Marcus can't contain his urge to duel when he comes across a worthy opponent. One day, after defeating the Digimon called Agumon, he takes in the mysterious creature as his apprentice. In the midst of a battle with the menacing Kokatorimon, Marcus is able to digivolve Agumon to the bigger and stronger GeoGreymon. The newly formed pair brings down the rouge Digimon and is inducted into DATS for their efforts.”

“AGUMON”
“Agumon is a dinosaur-type Digimon. He is Marcus's partner. During his escape from DATS, he finds a role model in Marcus when he loses a fight to the seasoned brawler. Agumon decides to partner up with Marcus as his apprentice. He has a special move called 'Pepper Breath' where he breathes fire from his mouth. Receiving Marcus's DNA, he is able to digivolve to GeoGreymon.”

For further exampling, here’s the episode summary for the first episode. Be warned, these episode summaries are among the most spoilerific I’ve ever seen, if you haven’t seen them. Read this part at your own risk.

“1. THERE ARE MONSTERS AMONG US!”
“Secret Agent Yoshi gets a call to chase down a rogue raptor Digimon, named Agumon, but she finds him in a fight with Marcus Damon, a boy training to become an Ultimate Fighter. After the two fight to a draw, the combatants bond and become friends. They work together to battle another Digimon invader, Kokatorimon, who is attacking the city. During this time, Marcus discovers he can awaken something in his fist known as the DNA. With his DNA and a digivice, he helps Agumon digivolve into a bigger, stronger form. Agumon becomes GeoGreymon and ultimately defeats Kokatorimon.”

Now onto the show on the DVDs itself. This set contains the first 13 episodes, spread across 3 discs, so there’s no worry on footage quality here. This only features the English dub version which should be well assumed as it is, as there’s no dub for the uncut version. There’s still two audio options to choose from, just both in English - Stereo or 5.1 Surround Sound. I recommend playing with those settings while watching an actual episode to see which one sounds best on whatever you’re watching it with.

The first disc contains the first 4 episodes, the second another 4, and the third the final 5 for this release, as seen below.
EPISODE GUIDE
DISC ONE
1. There Are Monsters Among Us!
2. Marcus' Inner Strength!
3. The Return of Thomas!
4. The New Team of Marcus & Thomas!
DISC TWO
5. Digital World, Here We Come!
6. The Ultimate Team No More?
7. A Birthday Kristy Will Never Forget!
8. The Singer's Secret
DISC THREE
9. Never Meet Your Heroes
10. Curse This Curse: Marcus's Bad Day
11. The Vile of Vilemon!
12. The Digi-Egg That Fell to Earth
13. The Rise of RizeGreymon!

The footage was taken directly from what was used to air on Jetix, as you can tell where there’s about 2 to 3 commercial fadeouts per episode. The Jetix logo and it’s animation aren’t present here though obviously, and the actual end credits are seen rather than an ad for another Jetix show, so this is easily your best option for seeing this show from the beginning.

However, that’s where things get a bit grim. This is the first and only anime title distributed by Well Go USA, and in spite of the obvious great effort put into this set, that makes me think they must be watching the sales figures like a hawk. Whether or not we get the rest of this show on DVD is directly related to how many sets sell, more than likely. So be sure to get a copy guys, as soon as you can. You can get it for around $20 from RightStuf, Wal-Mart, DeepDiscount, and presumably Well Go USA’s site itself.

With that, I draw this review to a close. I know, I know - I only covered the set rather than the show really. But there’s so much to say about this set that there was simply no room for that here. Expect a second review on this set, only focused more on the story, very soon. In closing, this is an exciting time for us as Digimon fans. So let’s all support this release and hope we get similar sets for the previous four seasons in the near future.

Air: The Motion Picture Review

And now for the final review on the Air franchise, I give you Air: The Motion Picture. I’ll go ahead and warn you now - there may be slight spoilers in this review, as it’ll be hard to comment on the movie without discussing the differences between it and the series. However, I’m going to do my best to keep them to an absolute minimum.

For starters, you’ll notice that the art for the movie is different from that for the show. In a lot of cases, this is simply because of a higher funding for the animation studio, but this time it’s because the animation was from a different studio entirely. While the TV series and the OVA were done by TBS Animation, the film was done by Toei, of Dragon Ball and One Piece fame. It’s not that the animation is bad, it’s quite beautiful really. However, the basic art-style is completely different. To give you an example, here’s Misuzu in the TV series, compared to her in the movie.

Now, the other main difference between the show and the movie (without delving too deeply into the story itself) is the overall feel to said story. Whereas the show felt more like a mystery filled with drama, the film version feels a lot more like a love story. Which version you like more will probably depend most on which version you watch first, as I have to say I found the show much more enjoyable.

That’s not to say that I didn’t like the motion picture - I loved it, it’s definitely a must see for anyone who’s seen either the show or the OVA. Hell, it’s even a great film if you haven’t seen anything of Air before. I just can’t classify the film as a must-see for everyone, like I did the show.

There’s not really a whole lot more I can get into without spoiling some of the finer points of the story, but I will give you a heads up - keep your eyes peeled for small cameos by most of the other girls from the series, as well as the cute little puppy Potato. They’re small and relatively pointless, but it’s a great way to still show them.

I give Air: The Motion Picture a 6 out of 10. It’s not near as amazing and landmark as the series version, in this humble fan’s opinion, but still a film you should give a look-see. Gyt has spoken.

Air OVA Review

As I had so much to say on the main 12 episodes of the series, I decided to review the last 3 separately. It works out well that way, since they’re part of an OVA I understand, rather than part of the series itself.

The first episode of the OVA, ‘Memories: Misuzu’s Story’ is merely a recollection of scenes from the series. There’s not a single piece of new animation that I noticed, which decreases the entertainment value for me. However, it’s not quite as bad as my dislike for the Blue Gender movie, and that actually did feature some new animation, so I think it simply depends on how much I enjoy said story. In the end, it was a nice little recap for the show, but I really could have done without being stabbed by the ending again, so soon after finishing the series. My poor heart…

The last two episodes of the OVA, ‘Air in Summer I: Mountain Path’ and ‘Air in Summer II: Universe’ revisit the background story of Lady Kanna’s search for her mother, that we first got to see some of in the latter half of the main series. When it randomly went into this story in the main series, I have to admit I didn’t care for it much - it was an unneeded distraction from the main story even if it did tie in to the overall one (I have the same feelings about the ‘Tales of the Black Freighter’ portion of ‘The Watchmen’ graphic novel; I actually prefer it without it in there, as the movie did it). This time though, with the new parts that flesh out the characters and story much better, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. It also answered some questions that I still had left over from this portion of the series, which is always nice.

That and, Ryuya may well be my favorite character in the overall series as it is. Yukito is a great character, but there’s something about Ryuya’s attitude, especially in his interactions with Kanna, that is really enjoyable to watch. As much as I dislike watching the same thing again and again when it tries to claim to be something new, I actually wouldn’t mind to see another retelling of this story with only some new animation, going even further in depth on this set of characters. Maybe just a 6 or 7 episode series, showing a lot more of Ryuya’s past prior to meeting Kanna and Uraha, would be nice.

So in the end, I found myself quite enjoying this OVA; definitely a lot more than I was expecting. It’s a bit ironic too, as when I thought it was all a re-telling of Kanna’s story, I wasn’t too excited. Now, I wish it’d been the full 3 episodes after all, and not had a recap of Misuzu’s too.

Still, while I enjoyed the OVA, it was more like a regular anime rather than one of my possible required viewing titles. Also, I feel the need to make up for my time-based biased perfect rating of the series. With both of those things in mind, I give Air OVA a 7 out of 10. Definitely a nice thing to see after you’ve seen the main series.

Ponyo.

Watched Ponyo earlier today and I enjoyed it much more than I was expecting. The room I was in had about 50 or so people. Not bad for a showing at 11:00 am on a rainy day.

Judging from the trailer and reviews I'd read, I had expected this to be very kid-oriented and I wasn't wrong, but it managed to make me watch it through a child's eyes and admire the simplicity of it all. The plot wanders slightly aimlessly, making it the movie seem longer than its 84 minute run. But, the animation is nothing less than breathtaking. The amount of detail that's poured into every shot of the water and the different type of fish and crustaceans is just astounding. The music is sublime, providing the perfect atmosphere to lay back and watch the world of Ponyo.

Dub-wise, this is easily the best dub for a Miyazaki movie that I've heard ( I have to say that I still haven't seen Totoro). Aside from the ending song- which sounds just like what you'd expect from a pair of kids singing- Frankie Jonas and Noah Cyrus put up solid performances in their respective roles. And yes, Tina Fey deserves all the praise she's been getting for her role as Lisa.

All in all, Ponyo is a quintessential children's fairy tale. Don't go in expecting something as hard-hitting as Princess Mononoke and you won't be disappointed.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood- Brief Overview up to ep. 19.

***spoilers***

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood had, and still has, quite a bit against it once you think about it. Not only is it being judged by fans of the first series and of those of the manga, but it's only been about 6 years since the first one aired- not giving enough time for new anime fans who don't know anything about FMA to take over the fandom. For the first 13 eps., it stuck to material that's already been covered by the first series. But what the creators decided to do was just rush through this material and assume that you've watched all of this before. While that is true for most of the people watching this series, it really turns up flat for the most part and it doesn't even adapt Arakawa's manga completely with the random changes it makes, so in the end it seems like they were just trying to tick both camps off. Two things that really have improved is the animation, as well as the music, which was something I really didn't like about the first series.

Now that we're in territory not covered by the first series, Brotherhood at least now as the luxury of only being compared to one piece of work. It's still changing some parts and it's still kind of "so-so' so far, but ep. 19 shows the good side of taking some liberties. While leaving out the fight between Ling and Lan Fan vs. Envy and Gluttony seemed like a bad idea at first, it really allowed for Mustang and crew to be the center of attention in this whole episode. The art direction when Lust was getting burned to crisp was the best by far in this series. Not to mention that it actually handled Alphonse's brief, but important development really well. This part in the manga is definitely one that is hard to mess up, but considering how it's been so far, I was half-expecting it to be mediocre. I'm glad that it wasn't.