|
|
||||||||||
| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rent | 8 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
 Ggultra2764
|
[series:710#1552] |
|
This was a fun romp while it lasted. For the most part, Ushio and Tora deals with the titular pair in everyday activity and dealing with random demons in episodic "monster of the day" type plots. The chemistry between them is fun to see where they often like to torment one another and Ushio has to make use of his spear to keep Tora in line thus making it feel like a buddy series of sorts and the series does do well in building up suspense as the two deal with the different enemy threats. While some are your typical mindless foe, others are fleshed out where you know what drove them to become villainous/hostile towards humanity or demons. Because the show's developments are mostly episodic though, there are no ongoing plot threads that come up and other than Ushio and Tora's bond, not too much changes with their characters nor the romantic situation that is teased involving Ushio and his two female childhood friends, especially considering this is yet another OAV used to promote an ongoing manga series which appeared to be the typical trend with the format in the 1990s. The series also gets quite violent at points with a good amount of dismemberment and plenty of bloodshed. Still if you crave some demon-slaying action with some buddy comedy tossed into the mix, Ushio and Tora makes for a good solid watch.
Last updated Friday, January 27 2012. Created Friday, January 27 2012. | ||||||||
| Rent |
 Stretch
|
[series:710#628] | ||||||
|
I'd been aware of this series for a long time, but somehow I got a bad impression of it from the trailers I saw--maybe it was the terrifying look of Tora, (or the fact that Ushio isn't exactly the most handsome charachter around), but this seemed like a horror story to me. After I read several reviews which claimed that this series is also really funny at times, I gave it a try. The basic premise of this show is sort of a combination of Tenchi Muyo and Inuyasha--an extremely dangerous creature has been imprisoned underneath a temple for hundreds of years, pinned in place by a magical weapon. Now, in a desperate situation, a boy must risk releasing it. I liked it (it really is funny), but as it turns out my original impression wasn't too far off. This is a sort of horror-comedy, and the horror has priority (at least for the first ten episodes--more about this later). People are decapitated, torn apart, devoured (fortunately, blood is splashed about so liberally that it's hard to take the violence seriously). Once they gain some respect for each other, Ushio and Tora ("Tiger") become a de-facto team of demon hunters, dealing with the sort of spirits you might see in Inuyasha. After episode 10 I was feeling a bit disappointed, having encountered more violence and less humor than I had expected. I also had a mystery on my hands--one critic had said there were 12 episodes, another listed 13, but my DVD claimed only to include "all 10 episodes". It turned out that the missing "episodes" were located in the category of "Comically Deformed Theater" in the Extras section. I nearly missed them because at first glance this section seemed to be nothing more than replays of exciting scenes from episodes 1-10. But afterwards comes a sort of Omake theater, 5 or 6 acts, completely SD mode, and completely comedy. I didn't have a stopwatch on hand, but I think it was around 30 minutes altogether. There's also the "outtakes" section--a combination of humorous bloopers by the voice actors and them sort of playing MST3K with the show. That was nice--I finished this often grisly series with a smile on my face. My favorite line: "He hides in rotating objects like this... seems to really enjoy the feeling--what a weirdo" --Tora Last updated Friday, February 13 2009. Created Thursday, January 01 2004. | ||||||||
