We had two interesting phenomena in the world of anime-source.com happen at the same time, so naturally we had to combine the two. First we were in the midst of making plans for our first continent-wide staff gathering and then while that was developing, we got a generous donation from Bandai Visual in the form of advanced copies of their latest DVDs. So we took the opportunity to sit down and have a panel discussion of each of the titles that were sent to us.

The Panelists

Freedom Volume 1

SYNOPSIS:

DVD SPECIFICATIONS:

Price: $39.99 Episodes: 1 (24 minutes) Disk Extras: 1 minute trailer (DVD), 8 minute trailer (HD-DVD, requires internet access) Additional Material Extras: None Audio: Japanese w/ English subtitles only

SCREENCAPS AND PANELISTS' THOUGHTS:

xenocrisis0153 Positive: I love future-tech, especially cities. This series is full those aspects which gives me plenty of gawk and stare at while I watch. The story seems somewhat interesting. Negative: The character design is unattractive; very low-quality compared to the rest of the animation. Rating: 6.5/10 Frundock Positive: Good background story; nice soundtrack/soundFX. Negative: Stoic animation; poor character development. Rating: 6.5/10 Alexiel Positive: Music is beautiful and fitting; reminds me of Now & Then, Here & There; has a lot of promise based on the next-episode preview. Negative: CG is nice but having the whole thing as such causes laxity in elaborate designs; took a piece of Akira and put them on the Moon. Rating: 6/10 ddogt432 Positive: Clean look; characters established quickly and with enough detail to put most episode into context; the race was nice; DVD case is nice. Negative: Felt like I was watching a video game cutscene; story feels very forced. Rating: 4/10 Kaiser Positive: Smooth animnation; strong 3D panning made environment believable; interesting post-apocalyptic setting. Negative: Older-style character designs, but doesn't really detract from the show; music did not stand out in my personal preference; no extras on disc; not a very exciting cliffhanger to make you want to continue. Rating: none given Leoxjm Positive: Technically speaking, Freedom 1 is impressive; background art and panoramic shots are breathtaking as they are highly detailed and colorful. The animation is smooth and consistent throughout the episode; the characters and objects in movement are also well drawn. Music was enjoyable. Negative: Old-school character designs look almost straight out of Akira. Though well-done, I personally didn't like them. Most extras only available on HD-DVD drives. Hard to tell if the show is interesting since there wasn't much story development in the first episode. Can't say that the series is bad, but doubtful that anyone will regret missing out on this one. Rating: 6.5/10 Rysticgon Positive: Interesting plot background, though the first episode doesn't establish much. Animation is quite good for cel-shading; picture clarity of the DVD is extremely crisp and nice looking. Subtitles are well-done. Character drawings are similar to old-school style, but are nice looking. Negative: Cel-shaded animation gives movement a jerky feeling to it. Rating: 8/10

Galaxy Angel Rune Volume 1

SYNOPSIS:

DVD SPECIFICATIONS:

Price: $19.99 Episodes: 1 (25 mins) Disk Extras: 50 mins; trailers, textless themes, seiyuu concert performance Additional Material Extras: 8-page booklet with character descriptions and Angel Frame data Audio: Japanese w/ English subtitles only

SCREENCAPS AND PANELISTS' THOUGHTS

xenocrisis0153 Positive: Very colorful; attractive character design; Apricot is the cutest anime girl of the year; the music is quite enjoyable. The animation for the space-craft and dogfights is stunningly beautiful. Negative: The comedy is way too rapid-fire and weak at times making it difficult to capture a new audience. Note, it does get better once you get into the later episodes on upcoming volumes. Rating: 7.5/10 Frundock Positive: Vivid colors, well-defined; stupid yet funny Negative: Subtitiles overlap with background making them hard to read; stupid yet funny. Alexiel Positive: Characters are cute and endearing; strong moe, yet simple and fun; pretty animation. Negative: Too light with not much explanation of what's happening; no real hook; requires some past knowledge of the series. Rating: 7/10 ddogt432 Positive: Colorful. Negative: Voices; bad censorship gag (they used caution-tape across the screen to cover up ecchi-ness). Rating: 2/10 Kaiser Positive: Fanservice. Negative: Silly/stupid/medicre comedy; totally in the dark if you haven't seen Galaxy Angel before; annoying voices; childish. Rating: none given Leoxjm Positive: Cute and silly; character designs are great. Plenty of eye-candy. Negative: Most characters were obnoxious. The jumps between 2D and 3D animation make you wonder if you are watching the same anime you were a minute ago. A ship that can cast a "heal" spell is ridiculous. Since it's a sequel/spinoff, some jokes or intros will be lost to newcomers to the franchise. Rating: 3/10 Rysticgon Positive: Animation is alright; modern character designs. Negative: Voice-acting is annoying; glitches noticable at beginning of first episode; mistakes in character designs (nano's tail doesn't move when she walks); stupid humor; not enough explanation of the plot in the first DVD volume. Rating: 6/10

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