Anime: Senkaiden Houshin Engi

Whee. Soul Hunter. Well. It's kind of hard to write a review for this series, because my opinion of it changed several times while watching it, so I'm a little unsure now.

It starts out as a below-average series and ends as an above-average one. In short, story, animation and everything else grows during the series, so the series as a whole exceeded my expectations, which were based on the first few episodes.

It's a typical action.adventure anime. There's a hero (of course, he is a complete idiot), and he sets out to save the world (or at least beat up bad guys), and of course he is damn weak, so he finds friends, forms a party, and they go on to their adventure. We've seen that about a thousand times, which does not mean that it's bad, it's just a standard setup.

The world this story takes place in is rather funny, too. There are the Immortals in Heaven, the Humans on the Earth and Demons. Our stupid hero is of course one of the Immortals. And the bad guys are the Demons. And he wants to protect the Humans. To do this, he uses a Paopei - some kind of superpower-weapon - which controls wind. Yeah. Uh. Right.

As I said before, there is a lot of development throughout the series. He makes friends and develops. He gets stronger, and at the end of the series he isn't the idiot he was in the beginning anymore. I liked that development, since I didn't expect it at all judging from the first few episodes.

To the ratings:

Animation:
It's hard to judge the animation level. Some scenes are not animated at all, but use a still picture / slides instead. This is sometimes even done in fighting scenes, which makes the Anime look cheap. Besides that, the animation is usually average. Nothing extraordinary, not particularily well done, but not absolutely bad either. There are exceptions, though. On some rare occasions rendered / computer animated scenes are used, and sometimes the Animation really looks cool (comparing to the rest you see in the series).

So in short, animation is largely average, with some downpoints (still images) and some uplifts (special effects) in between.

Sound:
That one's hard to judge to. I like the voice actors, most of the voices fit their characters, so I think they were selected well. The music is nothing outstanding, it often sounds cheap (computer-made). But in it's own way, it fits the comical style of the series too, which probably wouldn't be the case with extraordinary music pieces. You definitely won't want the OST, though.

Story:
It's confusing and slow at first, but it gets much better to the end. As I said before, there's quite a lot of development going on, and it really exceeded my expectations by doing this. Another plus is, that although there are quite a lot of fights, a real story is devilered and developed too. Although it may sometimes seem a little slow.

Character:
The characters seem to be cheap at first, but again they're saved by development. Especially about the main character we get to know a whole lot to the end of the series. Background story, childhood, and so on, for the main character that's all there. Even for some of the other characters short flashbacks are made for introduction purposes, which is a big plus I think. Of course, there are also mysterious ones we learn nothing about at all... but they are supposed to be a little bit mysterious, so that's okay for me.

The only annoying thing about characters is that sometimes people turn up which the main character seems to know really well, but you don't at all. So it's hard to understand what's going on.

Value:
Uh. Would I actually buy it? I'm not too sure. Although it exceeded my expectation, which is a good thing, it's still way below other series I'd buy first. Still, I give this a good rating compared to what I would've given by judging only the first episodes.

Enjoyment:
In the end, I enjoyed watching this series. Although the rewatch factor isn't too high - there's nothing in it that'd make you watch it two times in a row like Juuni Kokki did to me for example - I think I will keep this series and maybe watch it again in a year or so, that is if I have still time to watch Anime by then ;-)

Recommendation:
If you have the chance to get this series, and if you already have watched everything in the AniDB Top50, and if you like typical average action-adventure fantasy anime, give it a try. Be warned, though, don't go for it with too high expectations, it's just an average series after all.