Another example for the ignorant masses to use against anime.
I firsthand apologize to IMDb for my scathingness despite there guidelines. However, the lower voting points would be useless were there not a need for negative reviews.There are good anime out there. There are good studios out there. There are good adaptations of Fate/Stay Night out there. This is none of the above. Apparently demographized as a Seinen anime, the way Studio DEEN handled this story was barely qualifying Shonen. Were it not for the violence, it could have been easily a baby's toy. Better yet, give them the set anyway. Babies always seem to find quick ways to destroy DVDs. Seriously, though, they had all the Action-based pacing of a shonen, even changing powers described in the original work, simply to create an action show. They dragged out fights that could have easily sat in one episode each, leaving the rest for exposition and character development, for far too long, and even managed to insult the clear target audiences intelligence by choosing not to do either during said battles. The filler arcs of Naruto were paced and characterized better than this. Hellsing was paced better than this. They didn't even feel like making it a proper shonen by throwing in the battle-based comedy typical of the more violent shows of the demographic, yet utterly relied on this violence in a manner far befitting a seinen.
The poor quality pushed my future ranking of Hellsing to a two, simply because I was unaware when watching that show that there could be something worse.
One point I was especially bothered by, Neither Archer, nor any of the servants depicted in the original game other that Caster, are capable of flight. For that matter, even Rider was exceeding typical boundaries with her wallrunning, which the game explained was atypical enough for Sabre to have trouble keeping up. Airdashing seems like a common enough skill in the anime to be Advent Children.
There are good examples of what they were trying to do, which DEEN completely disregarded. First of all the novel itself, but other than that, a darkly serious show doesn't need violence in every episode, as NGE fans will tell, and those that have it that often do center on the motives and personalities rather than the action itself, i.e. Cowboy Bebop. If you wanted to convert a relatively slow-paced story into a action series, you could have taken the time to watch Sherlock Holmes for how it can be done faithfully, while still making a whole different product that manages in it's own right. Making claims of desperate alliance at the top of one's lungs does not constitute character development, something the show sorely lacked. Where the VN failed in infodump, the lack thereof hurt far worse. Except in a diminished Kerei role.
The best that can be said? The music was fair, the opening was good, (Except the flying...) and dolphins and dragons were a much better way of censoring than avoiding the plot-relevant h-scenes of the novel.
score 1/10
selfsyd 14 July 2012
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2643290/14290
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