Reviews for Early Reins (5.29)

A western which had to be pushed into 45 minutes, but the crew clearly didn't know how to cut it into one nice piece, which leaves a forced anime.

The animation is decent. The characters look okay, although they have made all of the characters pretty exaggerated: the women are all stereotype, same for the robbers. Of course the boss is the guy with the biggest biceps. Not really original. So I have to distract some points for Character Design from an already poor animation (notice the word Innocennce at the station)
They also tried to blend in some CG stuff, but even though that already looks bad - it doesn't blend in with the backgrounds, so it looks like it was just pasted on the background - it also doesn't fit the scenes. It doesn't make sense to use CG when you leave the rest just as plain as possible.

The OP/ED songs are decently done. They try to give a western-feeling, which is clearly, but some of the songs played are just songs which should've been played at a slapstick, while there wasn't anything funny at that moment. Bad thing to do then.
The voices are okay. Most of the voices are done well, although the spoiled-girl voice was a bit annoying.

The story is very, very simple and it might be clear that they never intended this anime to be a deep story. In fact, they just didn't develop the plot at all. There is a train and it gets robbed. Do a lucky guess why robbers would want to rob a train, back in the Wild West. Indeed, predictable.
Very predictable, they hardly pay attention to the characters itself as well. Everyone gets a weapon when they start shooting and all of them hit as well. Not only is it hard to use a weapon, especially for people who have never used a gun (in that time, no normal woman would have used a gun at all - let alone a gatling gun), but shooting someone on a horse would even be hard for someone experienced. Here the realistic value drops below zero.
Also the clue was really predictable and they even showed it a little before they really exposed it, which was also bad.

The characters are all stereotype, which isn't that bad, but they are all sheep. "No, I don't wanna go." and the next moment they all yell "Yes, let's go kick their asses!" which sounds at least a bit unrealistic when people change that much within 5 seconds. There is absolutely no room for character development, and the only tiny bit there was, was for the sherriff. But that development is so forced that it was better if they didn't add it at all.
In the end, it didn't matter anyway, since the characters were meant to be there - and it was a coincidence that there was also a story.

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, therefor I doubt it does have a rewatch value. It hardly has a watch value, unless you like to see another fighting anime (this time with guns) without a story. I didn't enjoy this anime at all, just because it had a serious lack of plot and the characters couldn't make up for it either. 4 out of all 6 characters hardly even had a role at all and were just added for support.

There isn't much western style animes around and now I know why.
Wild Wild West and anime don't mix, from my point of view of course.
Altough the animation and sounds were pretty good, with country music and all, the story was lacking in many ways.
First of all, all the "good" guys are women and all the "bad" guys are men, even the most honourable of them turns out to be the biggest cheater, well, ok I can live with that since the females look good, but the plot itself is already so overused making it a first class cliche. You can predict the following scenes so easily as if you were a seer. Still...if there was a direct sequel to this then I'd certainly watch it, if not for the hopes for a better story then at least for the decent action scenes and for the girls ^_^

The characters have almost no background(just the very basics like where they live(d) and what they do etc.) and very little developement. But it would have been quite difficult to fit all that into a 40 min OVA so I guess it's forgivable.
Beware, sterotypes are abound!

The animation is good but CGI could need some polishing, especially the train. The music is all western style and it's quite cheesy but I guess some J-Pop tracks wouldn't really fit in.

Overall it was enjoyable, but not rewatchable unless you like girl power at its fullest.

You know what's a rarity in anime and manga. The western, as in the genre. Sure, you get a lot of anime inspired by westerns, like "Cowboy Bebop", "Trigun", "Gun X Sword", "El Cazador de la Bruja", "Outlaw Star", and "Coyote Ragtime Show", but nothing that's just a straight up western. Sure, there are a few manga that are westerns, such as "Gun Blaze West", "Green Blood", "Miriam", and "Angel Gunfighter", but since there is a lot more manga, you're bound to get more variety in manga, but the genre is still few and far between, and it's certainly an untapped genre when it comes the mediums of anime and manga. But one of the anime to pop up that is a straight western is 'Early Reins'.

Set during the early 1800s, the early years of the United States of America, Early Reins takes place entirely on a train en route to Sunshine Hill, shortly before it gets hijacked by robbers. While the soldiers onboard are caught unawares, the tables are turned as several women on board manage to stand up to the robbers and fight back. The heroine of this story, Margaret Hart, a young woman determined to become a sheriff, but lacks experience.

Unfortunately there isn't much to say about the anime outside of it's basic plot synopsis without spoiling specific details, since it's only 40 minutes long, barely long enough to qualify as a movie, there aren't any more episodes beyond this OVA, or even a manga to fall back on to read more of if you happened to really like what Early Reins has to offer.

Since it's so short, all of the good things that I could say about it feel like backhanded compliments due to just how short it is. The fact that it not only has an all female cast but each one of the characters has a distinct personality is nice. Even the English dub giving the cast era appropriate accents is a nice touch, as cliche as it is. But that's where my compliments end.

While a lot of it looks alright, it clearly uses early digital painting, which gives it a flat look, and some of the animations are clearly underdeveloped. It also came out when CGI was first being used on a wider scale for anime, and it clearly didn't have enough money put into it to make it look good, since there was no real guarantee if it was going to make it's money back.

I know that it seems like my review isn't exactly all that fair towards Early Reins, but that's because all there is a test pilot for a series that clearly never got off the ground. I actually liked this OVA, and it certainly has a lot of charm to it that a lot of other anime doesn't. It would have been neat to see our main characters as they went about their daily lives in an old timey western town, with each episode featuring a new conflict for our main characters to deal with and see the characters interacting with each other, or have a character centered episode.

Honestly, there should be a few more western inspired anime. Even though Japan doesn't really have the history with westerns that America does, the fact that several anime and manga, weather it be through it being a dedicated western or simply one of the things to influence it, have done a good enough job that I feel anime and manga could easily take the genre on under the right person or people.

A very unfortunate cross of anime and western cliches. You have all the western ingredients and every sterotype of anime you can think of. Female sheriffs, mini skirts, gunplay you cannot believe etc.

The animation was almost ok, even if it was a little bit jumpy at times. The characters are stereotype, both in character as in drawing. The music is your elevator-type western background.

I really cannot recommend this one as for both the western and the anime lover it just does not mix very well. For the western fan there is too much amiss and does not fit the timeline. For the anime lover the setting is just wrong and all that happens has been seen just too many times already.