[Note: This post contains presentations that may not be visible in RSS feed readers.]
I don’t know why I’m surprised, but .hack//SIGN is already going down the shitter as of episode three. The art quality has taken a dive, the plot has screeched to a halt, and a whole lot of my time is being wasted.
[Note: I’ve finally gotten through all of the posts that I wrote while I was in the Philippines (about a month and a half ago)! Note that I watched episode eight and wrote the opening paragraphs at that time, but the rest of this post is fresh, so if there’s a change in voice, that would be why.]
I have to admit, I was worried for a minute there. What if Madlax suddenly turned out to be a good show? What if EVERY Bee Train show turned out to be good after a rough beginning?! All the work on this site would be for naught! Alas, my fears were needless, as episode eight of Madlax is a huge pile of shit.
[Sorry for this post being a week and an hour late. Turns out coordinating people to do videos is really difficult. Next week’s ep will be out as scheduled.]
I won’t lie, .hack//SIGN has gotten off to good start. If I were watching it without pretext, I wouldn’t have dropped it after these two episodes. My only real trouble with the series continues to be its verisimilitude.
[If you use an RSS feed reader, you may have read this post already. It was accidentally published five days early, then rescheduled.]
In an unexpectedly pleasant twist of fate, Madlax episode seven is really good. This is great because being able to talk about why the episode is successful can heighten my points about why the rest of the show is so godawful. It sells home the fact that there’s a lot of potential lying under this series, being squandered by the lackluster presentation.
There are still some really stupid moments, which I’ll be sure to point out, but most of it reflected the excellent writing and pacing counterbalancing a low-budget production that made Mashimo Kouichi’s Eat-Man so good.
While looking for images to use for the site’s header, I stumbled across a “Bee Train Fan Forum.” It’s actually part of a “Bee Train Fan” website, which includes both a wiki and a forum. These people will probably never know about this blog, but I’m considering them my official arch-nemeses.
Anyway, there isn’t enough to say about episode six to warrant a whole post. Most of it is dialog-driven backstory for Margaret and her maid, along with a subplot wherein one of Margaret’s classmates tries to rape her. So, I decided to make an AMV using the episode, set to Date Rape by Sublime. Enjoy!
[Note: This post contains presentations that may not be visible in RSS feed readers.]
First, let me just say, this OP is the best thing Bee Train has ever animated.
Today I’ll get into Madlax’s vocal cast. Most of the voices in Madlax aren’t bad, but are bland and unmemorable due to the horribly shitty writing—it starts to feel sad when you realize that most of the cast are actually pretty great seiyuu.
From today forward, I’ll be covering each of Bee Train’s .hack franchise shows on Fridays, starting with .hack//SIGN. Because I have a long history with the franchise, I decided to do a little introduction first.
By now, some of you must be wondering, “who the hell are Bee Train, anyway? WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS?” To answer that question, I’ll give a bit of history on the studio.
While it was still a boring slog, at least the first episode of this show had a good ratio of screentime to bullets fired. Episodes two and three have been nothing but relentlessly boring shit. That’s why Madlax doesn’t qualify as “awesomely bad”—it’s not fun to watch. I only start getting worth out of it when I ruthlessly tear it to shreds on my repeat viewings (yes, I actually watch these fuckers twice for each post.)
First image of the ep, and fastest an ep of anime has ever made me rage.
I HATE BEE TRAIN 