In which a guy old enough to know better talks about...stuff.
Including, but not necessarily limited to: Wrestling, Metal, Anime, Books, Comics, Cartoons, Stuff that pisses me off, AOR and songs with "Metal" in the title.
The Story: A pair of genetically engineered Allosaurs are being transported in a truck with woefully weak security measures. Of course they escape because The Corporation or The Military are invariably unable to move these bioweapon horrors more than a mile without fucking it up. A small team of suspiciously unmilitary mercenaries are called in to recover the beasties and some of them get eaten.
I think that covers the basics.
One of my many movie pet hates is producers slapping Jurassic onto the cover of any DVD that has dinosaurs in it and nine times out of ten they're late Cretaceous creatures. I blame Spielberg for this one. Thanks a bunch Steve.
However, here we have some legitimately Jurassic dinosaurs and some numpty decided to go with Triassic Hunt instead.
You know, I think this might have been a more interesting film if they'd decided to use some creatures that were actually around in the Triassic.
Lyddekerina- a giant-ass, carnivorous newt. Created by: dmitrchel@mail.ru
It would make a refreshing change from badly-CGIed thropods. Admittedly it's a bit harder to create serious tension when you're hunting animals that are only a serious threat to fish and maybe squirrels.
Moving on to the actual film. Triassic Hunt is the sort of low-budget, dinoschlock that The Asylum pump out on a weekly basis. The low budget means that you end up watching the small cast running around a warehouse chasing clunky-looking Allosaurs.
.
At no point is it ever explained how the dinosaurs are able to fit through doors or climb stairs.
There's some attempt to develop the characters, which feels a bit half-hearted and the inevitable "revelations" will surprise nobody. Neither will the ending which I've already seen in a dozen films already. The whole thing is very formulaic.
Oh, this may possibly be a sequel to a film I haven't seen and don't really care about.
To sum up: Triassic Hunt feels like it was bolted together from bits of other movies and has very little fresh, original or even particularly interesting to offer.
You might get some enjoyment out of this film if you watch it with mates after many beers but I wouldn't count on it.
Alka is an assassin and the last suvivor of the Clan Of The Sword. After her village was wiped out by the Palme Empire, she sought revenge on the dark-magic users responsible.
Along the way she runs into a hard-drinking bounty-hunter, a strong-willed grave-robber and an enigmatic innkeeper, all of whom have their own plans.
I picked this one up because it looked sort of interesting. (And if you haven't read this blog before, anything involving gorgeous women with swords is going to get my attention. I apologise for nothing)
What I was expecting was fanservice-heavy fluff but Blade And Soul turned out to be a bit of a surprise.
While I was right about the fanservice - lots of seriously stacked female characters here - and there is a bit of fluff, the anime is more serious than I was expecting.
From the bloody opening scene there's plenty of death and this includes characters I was expecting to be important. More importantly, some of those deaths turn out to have repercussions. Remember that our heroine Alka is an assassin and as the series progresses, previous jobs come back to hurt her.
As a general thing, things did not go the way I was expecting at all. A series with this much jiggling should not have got me so invested.
Blade and Soul does have some flaws. Alka is essentially a blank-faced robot for much of the series and it's made even more noticeable compared to some of the dynamic characters around her. Once the cracks start to show, she gets a lot more interesting.
Problem #2 is that with such a short episode count, a number of interesting ideas are either skipped past or don't pay off. Example: Villainess Jin Varrel clearly has an interesting backstory but we never get to see it beyond enigmatic glimpses. Blade And Soul is based on an MMPORG so maybe some things are explained there. Doesn't help me much, though.
And did we really need that beach/hotsprings episode right at the end? It's entertaining and closer to the light-hearted anime I was expected but after the serious tone of the previous episodes it is a bit jarring. I can't help feeling that the time and effort could have been put to better use.
On the plus side, the art and animation are more than respectable, with some effort being put into the fights. Even more effort was put into the ending animation, where a certain character show off her dancing skills. I was genuinely impressed.
Moving on to a pet peeve for a moment, I am always happy to see anime where female characters are obviously grown women, rather than drawn as 12 years olds who just happen to have tits.
To sum up: Blade And Soul isn't ground-breaking but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise and I enjoyed watching it for all the right reasons.
Here's the dance routine I was talking about. Enjoy. .
