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| Episode Details | |
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| 1, 99 | |
| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Buy | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 8 |
 Ggultra2764
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[series:1351#1552] |
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(Buy-/ Rent+) A solid philosophically-driven action-drama, The Third: Girl With The Blue Eye explores developments with Honoka's character as she engages a number of jobs she takes part in with her "jack-of-all-trades" profession in a number of plot arcs. Each arc explores the young heroine either coming to grips with tasks that challenge the moral resolve of her character or encountering foes with their own tragic developments that Honoka comes to empathize with via her third eye's ability to sense the emotions of others. The series does present enough details on many of its prominent characters for you to connect with their problems from female lead Honoka's tragic past as an outcast to her young friend Millie dealing with the death of her grandfather. In addition, the series explores Honoka's interactions with beings that wouldn't normally be perceived by others to have sentience, in particular robots, AIs and animals. This plays a major role in shaping Honoka's perceptions of the world around her, especially as this growth in her character is increasingly emphasized in later plot arcs of the series. While not the prominent focus of the series, The Girl with the Blue Eye does also do some fleshing out of prominent elements to the world of its series, particularly the Technos Taboo. Being the means of which the Third enforces limitations on how much technology man is allowed to use, the series does look into some of the technologies that nearly led to humanity's extinction and why the Technos Taboo is strictly enforced out of fear by the Third that too much reliance on it would lead humanity to another global conflict. Yet despite technology being potentially used to destroy humanity, there is also emphasis on the technology having its benefits to aid humanity and learning of ways to improve it for man's convenience. This allows the subject concerning man's reliance on technology to be explored in both positive and negative lights from the perspectives of humanity and the Third. In terms of visuals, Girl With the Blue Eye's presentation is decent sporting a bright color palette with a good amount of visual detail emphasized through scenery. The show often goes to great lengths in showing off landscape scenes with gorgeous shots of scenes such as stargazing and mysterious phenomena. It also does some slick-looking CG renderings of vehicle and mecha designs, particularly Bogie's sand tank and the Blue Breaker mech. Moments of animation tend to be mixed at points. Some scenes feature still shots and apparent shortcuts which are shown in some of Honoka's sword battles. Others feature fluid and great-looking battle sequences, particularly when said vehicles and mecha get into the action. This show does carry some major flaws that keep me wanting to totally commit to a Buy rating for it. The biggest of these flaws I found was the show's narrator. Rather than trust viewers to come to their own conclusions over how characters feel in tense situations, the narrator has the annoying habit of expressing these details when they were clear as day to the viewer, making him more intrusive than reliable in detailing on elements of the show's story. There are some prominent elements and characters within the series that lack a decent amount of depth, particularly the Third and Iks. In addition while the final arc of the series does shed some more light as to why the Third enforce the Technos Taboo, the pacing and developments to it looked fairly rushed compared to the earlier arcs within the series. Despite some major flaws, The Third: Girl with the Blue Eye was a solid action-drama exploring the growth of Honoka's character through her various adventures and focusing on elements of human morality in regards to technology and finding sentience within anything not physically and mentally human in nature. Last updated Thursday, August 25 2011. Created Thursday, August 25 2011. | ||||||||
| Watch | 7 | 7 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 7 |
 Dreamer
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[series:1351#2279] |
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Now here's an odd title that mixes some strange characters in a futuristic setting. Though it was watchable, I'm not sure if I like it or not. Art, Animation & Character Designs One thing to note, at about the 13th episode, it seemed the artwork went through a slight change.... or got a slight upgrade. Especially noticeable in Honoka. She seemed more refined.... especially her facial appearance. As we, colors looked a bit richer and overall artwork seemed a bit more refined. But then the very next episode, it goes back to normal. So i guess that episode was a fluke. Music There's some really great pieces to this soundtrack. A notable one is in episode 16 with the dragonfly scene. The humming and enchanting music was nicely done. It can almost be considered epic. At other times, we have some nice dramatic pieces, especially during fight scenes... which really brings out the intense action. Series and Episode Story For the most part, this series is episodic. There are few episode stories that span a couple but concludes soon thereafter. For sure, there are some unusual characters here... a talking tank (AI), Demi-gods (The Third), a visiting alien (Ikus), and a handful of other odd characters that somehow fit the mold of this series but strangely. At some points (mainly near the end), the series goes toward a more philosphical or religious setting, especially in the last couple episodes with some characters that we can almost call "God" (or gods).... as in the Christian religion. Overall, not sure what to make of this. On a per-episode basis, it's a fairly enjoyable series. I mean, there's nothing special or spectacular about it.... but good enough nevertheless. As for the overall series..... hmmm...... I'm still thinking. Last updated Sunday, June 05 2011. Created Sunday, June 05 2011. | ||||||||
| Unevaluated |
 Stretch
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[series:1351#628] | ||||||
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(15 episodes watched): I also noticed what a well-rounded and effective opening episode this series has: We get a decent introduction to Honoka, what skills she has, what she does, how she acts--and then something weird happens, as a sort of cliffhanger to leave us eager for episode two. I like the balanced mix of action and silliness. I'm at about the halfway point through the series, and I still have little idea of what exactly "The Third" are, or what the rules governing this culture and it's use of technology are, which is rather frustrating. I also have little idea where the plot as a whole is going. Honoka has defeated a major menace, which was fairly cool, but where will things go from here? I know little more about why she is considered an outcast by The Third than I did at episode one. I don't know if they will come together at the end, but it seems that the first half of this series involves one subplot and the second half involves another, possibly with little or nothing to do with each other except the same characters. One jarring abnormality of this show is that in episode 13 it seems that a new character designer has taken over and Honoka looks distinctly different than before. It's virtually impossible to put the difference into words, it's just like this was a live-action show and a new actress had taken over the key rolefor an episode! Being in charge of keeping chardesigns constant must be a thankless yet highly important job--we seldom notice problems like this because most of the time great care is taken to prevent them. Things seem to be back to normal in the next episode. Anyway, an unusual feature of this series is that often times a narrator cuts in to describe what Honoka or other characters are thinking and feeling--though I kind of get the feeling that this was an attempt to help the viewer make a little sense out of a confusing plot. Quotations from poetry are also employed, and the subtitles are worded in a confusing and cryptic manner (intentionally, I assume), which makes it difficult to keep track of exactly what's going on. There is also a good deal of philosophical dialogue, which is likewise confusing. I'm left wondering if I can afford to admit that I haven't a clue what the characters are talking about, and just enjoy the action and comedy without trying to make sense of Honoka's deep feelings--or, in the end, would that turn out to spoil the story as a whole? I'm too far into this series to give up, but if I'd known The Third would turn out like this, I'd probably have started watching something else instead. If I were to assign a rating already, I think it would be "Watch Plus". P.S: Why does this series deliver the usual "This episode was sponsored by..." in fluent English? P.P.S: A wolf, a fairy, a shape-shifter and a sword carrying girl walked into a bar together... No, not really, but the characters in this second half plot are so mind-bogglingly bizarre that they might have been put to best use in just such a joke. I have given up and shelved this series indefinitely. I've concluded that the plot is really going nowhere and there will never be an understandable conclusion. When a series gets to the point that you dread watching another episode, it's time to quit. Last updated Friday, October 12 2007. Created Sunday, March 04 2007. | ||||||||
| Unevaluated |
 Jan-Chan
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[series:1351#967] | ||||||
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Why does this series remind me of Tank Girl? ... (which I actually enjoyed – in a perverse and abusive way) This is the story of Honoka, the little samurai girl and her hulking paternalistic bolo (or sentient sand-tank for those of you who have not read any of Keith Laumer’s Bolo books) and their travels in a post-apocalyptic world. But this series has perhaps one of the best first episode starts that I have seen in a long time. One should check this series out. I have posted some snaps of the first episode. (Scifi authors - Keith Laumer & David Weber jointly wrote a multi-book science fiction series about sentient super-heavy tanks called Bolos. The stories are usually told in the first-person perspective with a Bolo as the main character, often in a short story format, which cover a wide range of story styles and issues. While the first book was written well over 15 years ago, this scifi series has won awards and has been in near continuous print, which is an indication as to how good this series is. It is well worth checking out if you enjoy these types of stories.) Last updated Sunday, February 25 2007. Created Tuesday, May 30 2006. | ||||||||
Other Sites
| Name | URL |
|---|---|
| Official (Wowow) Japanese Web Site | http://www.wowow.co.jp/anime/third/ |
| Wikipedia entry for Keith Laumer's Bolos | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(self-aware_tank) |
| Interesting web site about Bolos | http://users.stargate.net/~whkeith/htm/bolo.htm |
| Great fan site - with a lot of images of Bolos. | |
| R1 (English) Series Web Site | http://the-third.rightstuf.com/ |
| Hosted by The Rightstuf - an interesting site to visit | |
| Wikipedia (English) Manga & Anime listing | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third |
