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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Unevaluated |
 chibi
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[series:2054#2380] | ||||||
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Five episodes seen. The sub-title means roughly: "The world is reflected in the eyes of the girl who looks up at the sky." Beautiful character designs with character development that has a lot of depth -- I feel like these are real people that I'm coming to know. The pacing makes me think the story is based on a book rather than a manga, relatively slow without the frantic rush from one crisis to the next. It has the potential to be a great series, but I'm always leery of anime with magical technology themes, they tend to turn into a muddle at the end.
Last updated Monday, February 23 2009. Created Monday, February 23 2009. | ||||||||
| Unevaluated |
 Stretch
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[series:2054#628] | ||||||
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(Six episodes watched): Before watching part of Munto, I had just watched the first episode of Deltora Quest, which seemed rather corny and unoriginal. I was thinking that Munto would probably be more of the same, but was in fact pleasantly surprised. I thought to myself, 'this actually looks pretty neat!' I liked the link between fantasy and the here-and-now, rather than the story taking place entirely in some other world. There is nice artwork, charismatic characters, some depth and originality, and a plot which seemed to actually be going somewhere which I couldn't predict. I was glad I hadn't ignored this show altogether. The animation--especially the action scenes--have a distinctive style, i.e, some significant extra effort was made to make them pleasing and unusual. The artwork is colorful and distinctive, with what I'd describe as semi-pastel and nicely blended colors. The characters are thoughtful with realistic emotions. I like the fact that Yumemi has a realistic scepticism to calls for her "hidden power", unlike many anime characters. All-in-all, a credit to Kyoto Animation. However, this was about as good as Munto got. In episode four the story leaps ahead a year-and-a-half (perhaps the end of the overlap with the OVAs?). The episode was set almost entirely in the Magic world. Fighting goes on but all the different factions are confusing and my interest began to fall off. I still had no idea why Yumemi is the "Girl of Destiny". Please make something intriguing which I actually understand happen! The thought occured to me early on that the shortage and wastage of "Akuto" might be a parable for our own foolhardy practices with energy, fossil fuels, etc, but if so, not much has been done with it. Was anything really accomplished during the first plot arc? Fighting seemed to go on regardless, in a shallow good guys vs. bad guys manner. There is hyperbole about courage and protecting your friends' futures, but it doesn't seem very convincing. I'm getting a little tired of series in which a human turns out to have fantastic powers, but nobody bothers to offer much of an explanation. Why doesn't Yumemi ask Munto what it is that makes her special? The amount of character development seems insufficient to explain their behavior in the face of inexplicable, mind-boggling circumstances. The special effects are awesome but kind of go to waste when the plot frustrates and bores me. I ultimately decided to shelve this series. Last updated Tuesday, December 27 2011. Created Monday, January 26 2009. | ||||||||
