April 04, 2005
The Law of Ueki Episode 1 - Ueki Kousuke - The Law of Justice
OP - Falco (Hitomi Shimatani) - well, you can immediately tell who the director is - the opening animation has all the hallmarks of Hiroshi Watanabe's previous works (Star Ocean EX, Matantei Loki Ragnarok etc.) And if he can do one thing right, it's definitely opening sequences - action packed, vibrant and all-round interesting. The song is standard avex mode synth pop, but it's not bad as far as these things go.
ED - Kokoro no Wakusei ~Little planets~ (Aiko Kayou) - generic ending ballad as usual, but not too bad.
Ueki Kousuke can turn rubbish into trees, as can his "master", the teacher Kobasen. When his classmate Ai Mori spots him doing this, she understandably thinks he's an alien, until Kobasen explains that he is in fact a "God Candidate", part of a system where people battle it out so their master can become God. He has given Ueki this one power to use only for good - if he uses it against innocent people, then he loses one of his personal attributes, such as charm etc. For this episode, however, Ueki ends up protecting a martial artist, Sakura Suzuki, and a small kid from being killed by a nasty man, with Ai's help.
Wow, this is several times better than MAR! While it's still fairly cheesy shounen, the show's direction and production are so much less pedestrian, with a surprisingly good orchestral score for this type of series and some pretty decent animation. The two young leads are nowhere near as annoying as most shounen protagonists are (although that's probably mostly down to Paku Romi and Tomoko Kawakami, two of my favourite seiyuu) and the premise is a little more interesting than most tournament shows. Since the manga is already finished, hopefully we won't get too much dragging out of the series either!
I'll certainly give the next episode of Ueki a shot, but I'm not very good at keeping going with these types of show unfortunately - they're the kind of thing I'd have on in the background or watch on telly, but not so much devoting full attention to. We'll see how it goes.
Posted by BluWacky at April 4, 2005 09:17 PM | TrackBackI didn't realize you were watching all of these raw ^_^ I have to admit that I'm curious about this show, as it's just like Gash Bell (down to the character designs) and even the competition style. Here's hoping a decent group will pick it up.
Posted by: Reika at April 4, 2005 09:59 PMIt's a little surprising to see a positive review of the first episode, because the trailer makes it seem really bad, mixing completely derivitive action with heavy-handed sermonizing.
Posted by: dbm at April 4, 2005 11:17 PMThe action is basically ecological FMA, but I take what I can get in a genre where there is no originality left whatsoever.
Of course, I can't really tell about the sermonising from the raw, but it doesn't actually seem to be an "ecological anime" in the way such a name suggests, merely that he turns garbage into trees. I can't see something along the lines of Arjuna being as successful as Ueki appears to have been with 20+ volumes of manga.
It's pretty well directed, though, in my opinion, keeping up the tension and effectively introducing us to the storyline. Basically, though, after the general mediocrity of MAR it's nice to see something in this genre with some spark of life in it.
Paku Romi as lead is always good. Unless, of course, the story is crap but I don't think that's going to be the case here...I mean, come on, turning garbage into trees?! :D
Posted by: aozora at April 4, 2005 11:30 PMhmmm.. might have to check this one out. "Paku Romi and Tomoko Kawakami" was the point that won me over. :)
Posted by: moyism at April 5, 2005 12:42 AMTurning garbage into trees might sound stupid, but I know the mangas to a certain point and besides the character design does not look very good and it's a weired story it somehow just works. I'm really looking forward to watch this show subtiteled ^^
Posted by: Mina at April 5, 2005 10:38 AMDespite being very silly and having well-below-average production values, that IS a nice bit of fun, isn't it? I might even enjoy it more with subtitles that are fully intelligible. And the male lead is much less annoying than the male leads in "Erementar Gerad" or "Yakitate! Japan".
Actually Ueki is not to much of an character at all *lol* He's always calm and does not speak too much. But i like the way they present mori Ai. she's much cuter than in the mangas!
Posted by: Mina at April 6, 2005 05:31 PMwell i thought that MAR was ok from what ive seen but this does look good and because shinsen subs has taken it up i think im gonna have to look into it. Also i find the main dude in erementar gerad to be very nice not really annoying at all.
Posted by: sirusjr at April 26, 2005 08:03 AMAnyone know where i can get the mangas for Law of Eueki?
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Posted by: cody jones at September 15, 2005 04:42 AM