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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Watch | 10 | 10 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 5 |
 Ggultra2764
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[series:1605#1552] |
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This overly ambitious CG-animated title from Katsuhiro Otomo attempts to create a light-hearted sci-fi adventure out of Takeru and his friends learning that their futuristic society of Eden is hiding secrets about the Earth's existence following an apocalyptic event supposedly made the planet inhabitable for humanity. While the premise seems interesting on paper, the series attempts to instead spin an idealistic take on its futuristic setting and milking enough cliches like Takeru and his pals being your typical hot-blooded youth, with the former having perhaps one of the dumbest reasons of wanting to risk his life that I've seen in an anime in the form of wanting to meet a pretty girl in the picture he finds from the remains of a fired rocket that crash lands on the moon's surface. The title's attempts to spin comedy fell completely flat for me throughout Freedom's run as it seemed tossed in just to kill time and the plot felt quite rushed in later episodes with its timeskip and convenient excuse of a resolution when Takeru deals with Eden's council over how they run their society. Also, you can take notice of the blatant product placement for Cup Noodles throughout this series as the company making them were a major financial backer of this anime's development. The anime is animated entirely through CG animation which works well in many instances of rendering scenery and objects like the hover-bikes used by the guys and the robots used by Eden's Council to apprehend Takeru and any defectors of their society. The animation is very fluid with anything that moves onscreen from fast movements of the mentioned hover bikes to the flight of space shuttles as they make reentry into the moon or Earth. The low point of the animation occasionally comes from character designs as the renderings usually look fake depending on camera angle and the facial designs can look awkward at points as it appeared Freedom was attempting to emulate Otomo's drawing style he employs for his work. Freedom's yet another Katsuhiro Otomo work that I don't really care too strongly for thanks to the title's overly ambitious efforts at creating a story. Like Akira and Steamboy, Freedom has its potential at creating an interesting fictional premise yet it falls flat from resorting to cliched elements and having too little time to flesh out more elements to its world to engage the audience. It might be worth watching if you're an Otomo fan or can heavily overlook its faults. But I'm not gonna waste time watching this more than once in its entirety. Last updated Sunday, December 22 2013. Created Tuesday, September 29 2009. | ||||||||
| Unevaluated |
 chibi
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[series:1605#2380] | ||||||
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Ah, so that's why the characters look like they're from Akira! Detailed and imaginative artwork, and the story has a great hook by the end of the second episode with a sort of "Logan's Run" flavor.
Last updated Wednesday, April 25 2007. Created Wednesday, April 25 2007. | ||||||||
| Unevaluated |
 Jan-Chan
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[series:1605#967] | ||||||
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(Two episodes watched.) This is proving to be an interesting series. The CGI animation is great, even if does have its quirks. The characters all seem to have a funky weird bobbing of their heads and limbs (which is probably due to the CG software), but otherwise - the level of detail in the animation is excellent. On a humorous note, the wiki-link Freedom mentions that this series is a collaborative effort between some very well known companies. (which explains why all of the characters are snacking on Nissin cup-a-soups). Of special note, Katsuhiro Otomo, the creator of Akira and Steamboy fame, is part of the animation team. The story line is fairly traditional with an alienated main character in a quasi-cyberpunk Dystopian (Wiki-link) society, who chooses to a very different coming of age adventure to the one that his family had planned for him. In any event, I find myself enjoying this series (however slow it is being released). 
Last updated Tuesday, June 16 2009. Created Monday, April 23 2007. | ||||||||
Other Sites
| Name | URL |
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| Japanese Language Series Web Site | http://freedom-project.jp/ |
