Elfenlied1012 (Level 15)

Halo legends review by M 

Disclosure

I can’t promise this will be a 100% non biased review. I’m a big halo fan not as much the games as the story. I think I viewed ever piece rather objectively, but in the end all reviews are subjective in nature. I’ve decided to review each section then average it out to the total score.

Halo origins

Essentially a double short telling of the halo timeline from the forerunner war to the modern told from Cortana. It works a a good reminded piece an matrix style however it’s not much to add to someone who is at all into the halo universe which is most people buying this. The Art oddly isn’t good in part one but fine in part of a strange lack of polish makes the first part hard to watch, but that blemish seems to fade when You leave you in part two. In the end this segment in Halo legends just gets a 2.5 five nanosecond epic battles out of 5 not bad not good and a little less then middle.

The Duel

A short story revolving an arbiter whom claims the covenant and the journey a lie.  He claims the elites no longer fight for honor, but for power. The Covenant of course claims him a demon and sends people to assassinate him. The Duel is probably the best of the bunch at least in terms of art. Using a water color art it feels like a moving painting very stylized and done very well. The story itself is more a cipher in a way to show you the elite society. They live like the Japanese of old all dressed in the formal gear straight from the warring states period. A very samurai esthetic that arguably seems like a just appeal t the japanophiles, but as a great love of old samurai and of the elites it feels like a perfect. The character designs are great and there is a flipping female elite FEMALE ELITE!!!  So I give the Duel a 5 space samurai out of 5

Homecoming

Another short story  this time revolving a female Spartan named dizzy I think she was from the books, but regardless it revolves around her past and a battle shes in. Its art style is rather plain anime nothing big or artsy like the Duel, but fine. This story more than the other two feels the most halo and the most anime. Plenty of halo music brings back memories however the story feels very last-episode-of-a-pretty-decent-anime-esk (put that on the back of the box) but still made someone who is rather desensitized a little emotional. No tears just a little of awe, but not much. If it were a one shot which it is the anime equivalent of I would give it a 4 bad grunt art out of 5

Odd one out

A spoof of halo in the opposite vain of red vs blue. Though I never laughed as hard as red verse blue Odd one out did a pretty good job. I expected it to be terrible, but it seemed pretty heartfelt funny. Not laughing funny but plenty humorous. The story is of Spartan 1337 already the name is a bad joke accidently landing on a planet and a super covenant yet brain dead soldier sent after him. IT was clear early on that the people who made this watched a lot of Dragon ball and decided yeah we will just make that with halo which seeing as I spent a far portion of my childhood watching terrible episodes of DBZ it came out really funny. A straight up homage complete with crater and pod, dinosaurs a scouter joke aura representing energy. Even a scene where the villain powers up. It’s pretty funny and a lot better than I expected earning 3.5 “heck of a mama”s out of 5

Prototype Be Human

Another short that turned out to be really good. Surrounding the Cole protocol and a Marine by the call sign of ghost this short main center focus is the difference between being human and a good soldier and weather you can be one without the other. The art is regular but with a lot more attention to detail and production value the earlier (Okay Duel can’t compare different style) the combat detail and art feel a lot better. The best part of Be Human is without much talking it says a lot making me give a kind of emotional reaction. Not crying not jumping out of my seat just a sober reaction the best a short can really do. It’s probably my second favorite and is noteworthy part of the package. This earns a 4.5 they be stealen my mecha out of 5

The babysitter

Again a short story I think you’re getting it now.  The story is this time a mission a bunch of ODST and a Spartan are sent to assassinate a prophet.  Basically a halo mission where its all stealth. For the most part this is pretty good addition I really liked the end to it and the art was really good to. Not as great as The Duel or Be Human, but another simple but surprisingly good short of which I at first thought would be terrible earning 4 HEADSHOTS!!! Out of 5

The Package

Let me start off by explaining that the one thing all the high rated short stories have in common is they were an anime shorts more than halo stories which is the key to why they were good however the Package is not it is terrible. The story is that the Spartan team from the books master Chief (John)  Kelly author Fred and Salomon are sent to find “the package” in the covenant ship. The art is CG and well it’s not good not because the production value isn’t great its just that anime CG is almost never good and CG western (which is what it ended up) is utterly terrible. As for the content it’s just a bunch of forced references to the books and games including a just horrible first person sequence like the one in doom the movie and twice as bad. Its so played out and is a concentrated dose of everything bad about halo.   Which scares me because that means that’s what Microsoft thinks we want from halo good god I miss bungie already. I can’t believe the ended that with a score 1.5 leave the theater early ending out of 5

Special Features

There is a making of which is always really cool in anime box sets in my opinions as well as commentary and some other cool stuff. + half a score to the end score

Ending note

I thought it was going to be terrible I mean I knew I would like the duel, but I didn’t think I would like anything else. The package is really a nice thing especially for a halo fan and I think I can break it down to this. If you like Halo and anime get it its really worth it just skip the last minisode if you only like anime just barrow it from a friend and watch the duel, babysitter, and Project be human and you got what you want. If you just like halo you needn’t bother it’s like the ani-matrix if you just like the matrix it’s not enough. The incredibly varied package ends up with 4 shot glass sized shorts out of 5    

   

M: A one off manga based of a side story about mostly Silabus and Alkaid told from the perspective of an    Alkaid look a-like friend of Silabus named Nanase. The story bacisly fallows her trying to be a stronger person instead of being a copy of everyone else which she does both in real and the world life.  Being in my police to review everything I read or watch mostly in the hopes of dropping my average review score so I don’t seem like the average YouTube user that will five star anything with music on it.

M: Start off with the bad Well to be plain and simply the book doesn’t have anything for anyone at all it provides no insight it doesn’t really elaborate on the characters and causes more questions than answer.  Like why in the game does Silabus or Alkaid not say anything when they met each other? Why does Alkaid never show up at canard if she was there every day like in Alcor? Why does she look different in this book in real life then the games? Do they even check to make sure stuff make sense? Do we care? IT really has no merits aside from having Alkaid in it which means that it’s awesome anyways.

M: positives Well let’s see umm sadly enough just having Alkaid made it entertaining enough for me to get through it So much so if it wasn’t for me spending the time to think about it objectively I would have given it a 3.5, but damn it’s not god. Its crap, but I enjoyed it I feel like they have screwed my mind again. It made me wants to go back and play the old .hack games. Is that the point to force old .hack fan boys and girls? Is this some sort of ingenious marketing campaign? I don’t know anymore

M: In the end of it all it’s not worth anything innless you really like .hack and well I do bite me. Objectionably I got to give it a 2 I dream of Alkaid sometimes at night out of 5.     

delete | edit | flag
   

F: M’s remade our format to fit manga in what we call mini-reviews. This is the first one and I hope you like it.  However M will not be her to edit or re write my review still enjoy

F: Kashimashi: girl meets girl surrounds Hazumu Osaragi a former boy who in the earlier manga was crush by an alien space ship. The alien being out of his damn mind, but a nice guy rebuilds him as a girl and returns him to his family. Over the course of the first manga till things were kind of set up like this. Hazumu loves both her best friend Tomari and her original crush Yasuna.  They are waiting for her to choice however the alien brings up another problem she doesn’t have much time to choose before she dies!

F: The story itself is just rather weird and is in no way deep and it all    seems like a cipher to give a reason why the weak willed Hazumu would even be decisive. The major complaint is it’s kind of boring until the end it seems to be way to long maybe it’s the fact that as a omnibus no matter how much you read it seems like it goes on forever, but I should be happy it never end not wishing I was doing something far more interesting. Another issue is as    I believe Erica once said that too many Yuri use gender-bending as an excuse for having Yuri without

having to have Lesbian characters. It seems played out, but true and just makes me a little sad.

F: however not everything is dark bottomless tartorus pit that M would like you to believe life is.  What the show lacks in diverse story telling it makes up with interesting characters expressions are not overused and tend to be reveling and the differences between admittedly mostly the female characters are many. The ending is actually really good the last few chapters are really warming and enjoyable. They story picks back up and ends well after half way through defiantly not a total loss.

F: In the end it’s alright and that good enough for me even if it’s half rate more Yuri isn’t bad it’s a small enough theme that I’m willing to suport almost anything from it. The totally mediocre package gets 3 why does nobody ever says the word lesbian in Yuri? out of 5     

delete | edit | flag
   

F: it’s the female user for her first formal review of course sticking to M’s format and edited by M as well. (M: I still serve some purpose) Anyways after reading Gia’s review of maria holic I decided to give it a go me being a huge fan of Yuri and all so sticking to Ms format well start off with a description. The story starts off with protagonist Kanako Miyamae of whom is literally allergic to men going to an all girl’s school. (M: Bacisly every Yuri ever made) however the twist is the first girl, Mariya, she meets is far from one. She quickly discovered “Her” identity and threatens to reveal his trencher. He being smart as he is and twice as evil threatens to blow her secret (that she’s a lesbian) and use his maid, the utterly drop dead hilarious Matsurika , to frame Kanako with sexual assault. They break a truce and begin a series of utterly bat shit crazy events.

F: Now in an attempt to not make a billion Akbar references lets move on to the heart of the matter. (M: If you dare go

through this review without an “it’s a trap” joke I will come after you) The show is separated into many unrelated stories similarly to most comedy slice of life titles. The show focus its effort not so much of the romance and fluff most Yuri literally drive themselves entirely upon and turn to more comedy antics driving up the references to stuff from   the failure of the virtual boy to the French revolution.  This makes Maria holic an ever so rare exception to the common place Yuri has as romances where the only exceptional feature is that it involves two women.  In fact one could make the argument that the only reason it’s set in an all girls school is A for the trap and B to make fun of the fact that yuri can’t seem to have a setting anywhere else.

F: Keeping to the format M set up (M: Damn straight) we will go to my negatives first. As I write this I realize most of my negatives are all more subjective then objective. The shows main subjective complaint is an I can’t help but be offended by some of Mariya’s remarks just plain offensive. I hate to be over sensitive and I love Mariya’s never ending sarcasm making “her” one of my favorite characters, but comments like “Lesbians can’t be chaste idiot.” Or “Your just filthy beast.” Felt kind of just unnecessary. Maria also seemed a bit too stereo typed being the perverted lesbian to the point when I came to the afrosamurai/giant bomb realization that is this show prejudice or am I for thinking it is? (M: why can’t both be true?) More objective complaints would be the shortness only twelve episodes ending in a completely anti-climactic series of mini episodes. However it felt best as a short series its jokes starting to wear by the end it and it kind of got depressing at a point just watching Kanako fail again and again, poor girl she needs to give me a call. (M: Thank god your girlfriend doesn’t read these)

   

F: tine for the positives and there are plentiful. The show itself down to its core is filled with unique personality everything down to the character to the opening and ending seem to be this one entity that wants to be what it is and not just is to be a “popular anime” something I truly coven in an anime.  The character have a really good feel and are all hilarious, from the maid throwing insults around with zero emotion to the priests with just awesome over thinking leaps in logic or my possibly favorite character the truly scare little cat girl that runs the dorms with an iron fist proclaiming herself good. Everything about this show is colorful the opening and ending are great to watch whether of not you like the song, the ending especially for its 8-bit nes art style that makes the little gamer girl in my heart squeal  like it’s Christmas. The show makes about a billion just small references to other things just for anyone to pick up n. my Favorite being that the only game system the dorm leader allows is the virtual boy, because “I like things with a tragic past.”  The jokes hit really well especially at the beginning making me even clap at a few parts its great I swear though towards the end it started to level off (except for the priest).  Another bonus is if you watch the entire ending which is different every time so that’s always a fu one to watch they have a final joke before a 30 second skit of a fake commercial that’s always great.

The final notes are simple the character and feel makes the show one of a kind even if you don’t like it and if you can handle a little gender bending and lesbianism it’s worth it. A show being what it wants to be gets this my first formally reviewed anime a 4 schools I would kill to go to out of 5.

M: as editor I felt the need to add a bit of my own jokes and added a few better description words. I’m proud to show off her first real review and last things last this is M reminding you