Monday, August 15, 2011

Anime Review No. 2-Wild Cardz


Well, my first review, I admit, is a bit of a mess. It was my first review, so I didn’t quite know what I was doing. I kinda rambled on at times, but I felt that I did get my point across. I’ll strive to improve these reviews as I go along.

A rather nice, though standard looking, dvd cover
Now, let’s move onto the title for review this week, Wild Cardz. Oh, boy, what an….odd title, and that’s putting it lightly. This OVA, which came out in 1997, was done by Studio OX, Movic and BMG Japan. This isn’t too surprising as most OVAs from the 90s were done as collaborative projects by various companies. Sometimes one company didn’t have enough money to make one, so they had to get help (I guess-this is pure conjecture). Funny thing is that Wild Cardz is not the only title for this. The alternative title for this is Jaja Uma Quartet, which to be honest, I prefer Wild Cardz (though the fact that poor literacy is apparently cool in the eyes of US Manga Corps lolz). This OVA is based off of a manga series, released 1995-97, as most good things in anime are. Though, is it that good?

Wild Cardz was licensed and distributed by US Manga Corps, the same company which brought us MD Geist (one of the worst anime I’ve ever seen IMHO), Vampire Wars, Psychic Wars, etc. (i.e. purveyors of cheaply made anime titles). Of course, Wild Cardz isn’t as bad, though it isn’t that good either.

Now, the story of Wild Cardz was somewhat straightforward. It involves the exploits of the Crown Knights as they seek to protect the Card Kingdom. Yes, this anime has a rather odd game pieces and poker cards theme to it. Anyway, this quartet of teenage girls includes Joe Diamond (the “Flash” of the group), Casa Clover (the psychic), Coco Heartful (‘Psycho Magic’/trickster) and finally Sunday Spade (the poker faced leader, with the trump card in the end). So, essentially, it has a shoujo-oriented cast.

Of course, the OVA itself is more geared to Shonen action-oriented style show. It basically amounts to a “Base Under Attack” story, where an outside force attempts to invade and the protagonists must defend the base from destruction. Of course, in this instance, we have a quartet of poker card themed heroines defending their base from attack by FLOATING CHESS PIECE MECHA, wait what?
Yes, it makes sense in context, only slightly
So yeah, past that point, Wild Cardz goes off the deep end in a bad way. The plot became so ridiculous that by the end of it I was left wondering what the heck just happened. Of course, that’s not the only thing wrong with this. The English dub track is….well not the worst I’ve heard, but it certainly isn’t the best either. In particular, the villains have worst voices than the heroines. Then again, the heroines sometimes slip into wooden acting quite a bit in this. The only English VA of note is this is Debora Rabbai, who voices Joe Diamond and she does a pretty good job nonetheless (She went on to do voice work in other and better series). The rest of the cast didn’t and thankfully that’s for the best.
Quite a crowded helicopter eh? lol
The animation is well, as the above images show, decent for its times. It isn’t particularly ground-breaking or terribly drawn, thankfully. The action scenes (which make up roughly half of the runtime) were pretty well done, though seeing the explosion of a floating chess piece mecha was awesome but still weird. Then again, its anime, what can you expect? Also, surprisingly, there’s not as much as fanservice as I thought, though there are at least 2 scenes where it’s implied.

So, final score for Wild Cardz is 6.5/10. It has good potential but it’s a tad too short to do the concept justice. The characters don’t get as much as development as desired, the plot is rushed through, with very little filler (then again that’s a good thing-I dislike filler).The animation, while decent, definitely is starting to show its age. I wish that the manga was available stateside, but sadly it isn’t. If you can get past the silliness and odd theme, this OVA is good for a few viewings at the very least. Though, you could do with better, I’m sure. Not bad, but then again not the best….
(Note-I might have a review up around Friday/Saturday this week and that’ll be my new release schedule from now on-Every week on Friday or Saturday.) Catch y’all laterz ^_^

(Images from Google Search and General Info on OVA from Anime News Network and Wikipedia)

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