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Law Of Ueki Vol. 2: Friends And Enemies
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scorpioeyez's Review
Wow, Didn't Expect That
Anime Geek, Movie guru, into action flicks
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| Cons |
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JUN
9
2007
Law Of Ueki Vol. 2: Friends And Enemies —
Originally published on otakureview.netIntro
Jumping back into an anime that has really changed my expectations in a matter of four episodes.
The Story
Jumping into the second volume, Ueki is still locked in the hardest battle he’s fought this far against an opponent who refuses to use his power and only fights with his martial arts. When the battle ends in a stalemate though, Ueki is free to move on to his next battle. Along the way to that though, Ueki meets another guy named BJ and the two bond over hip hop music on the train though soon it is revealed that they are both power users and the new battle begins.
The second battle that Ueki fights is against a guy named Robert Haydn. Robert Haydn is rumored to be the strongest power user in the tournament and he wants to face Ueki. Meeting at midnight in a park, the two face off in battle. Ueki has his work cut out for him once again though as the power that Haydn uses makes Ueki’s power difficult, if not impossible, to use effectively. This battle becomes even more personal though when Mr. K makes his presence known in the battle.
Filled with a new sense of purpose, Ueki finds a new reason to fight in the tournament and a new sponsor to guide him along the way in a guy named Yotchan and right away he is entered into a new battle against a guy named Bolo who has the power to turn his head into diamonds.
With only nine talents left and a desperate need to beat Robert Haydn to get revenge, Ueki is trying to learn how to save people outside the tournament without using his power. His last battle of the volume though is against a guy with 299 talents named Monjiro Oniyama and the power to kick dirt into iron balls.
The Good And The Bad
After watching the first volume of this series, I put this volume of anime into my player with very specific ideas on what I thought I was going to expect and very specific things that I wanted to see improved upon from the first volume and in many cases I was very pleased with what I saw.
The story and layout of this anime is still very predictable and formulaic which is still a small bother to me. While every episode has it’s own little quirks to get us through the side plots and character development, the plot layout of each episode really hardly ever changes. The episode will open with our story synopsis then it’s about 8 minutes of set up before we get into our battle of the episode. It’s rare that the anime will deviate from this system which makes for some predictable viewing, especially since the pattern has been to introduce who the enemy will be early in every episode with very few surprises ever taking place.
Luckily though, even though the major plot layout has yet to really change since the beginning, this volume really does a great job of improving on little things to keep the quality of viewing much better and much more enjoyable this time around.
In this volume I found myself really caring about the characters much more due to some great character development during the middle episodes of the volume. In these episodes the characters really step out and make themselves stand out against the plot which was a major problem on the first volume. I really hated how on the first volume the characters seemed to be just part of the plot rather than the plot being a part of the characters, it made seem expendable and not nearly as interesting but in this volume we really see the characters step forward and force you to pay attention to them, especially after Ueki discovers his new purpose for being in the tournament.
The writing in this volume also improved by leaps and bounds which was a welcome change from the very lame writing in the first volume. To be fair, the writing in this volume still follows the same fairly basic style as the first volume but in this volume the writers really took advantage of the unique plot device regarding Ueki’s constantly changing talents that he gains and loses through his battle. By using these much more and making them a much more constant focus of the character, they were able to really open new doors and have much more fun. This really led to a lot of fun and hilarious scenes with Ueki changing from episode to episode because of a new talent appearing within himself or one of his existing talents disappearing.
The animation in this volume was really well done which I enjoyed. While most of the primary animation and backgrounds held a very simple style of looking as close to traditional pen and ink animation as they could get it, the battle animation was quite well done with the CG animation making the powers of the characters appear that much more interesting and powerful. When you first hear about Robert Haydn’s powers you might be a little put off since his power sounds so weak but when you add in the very cool animation, his power suddenly appears that much more interesting and unique.
With so many new characters constantly entering and leaving the series, it’s easy for a series to fall into a trap of characters not distinguishing themselves from each other which I’m glad to see that this series has yet to fall into. Each character introduced has had a great unique look and personality that I’ve enjoyed thus far. While BJ was certainly one of the weaker characters that I’ve seen come out of this series thus far, he was still entertaining while he was on the screen.
Music
The background music on this volume really made its presence felt much more this time around which was a welcome change to how mellow it was in the first volume. While the music certainly doesn’t sound like it’s going to be nearly as fun outside of it’s anime context, it still served a good purpose within the animation and made for some enjoyable viewing.
I didn’t notice any drops in sound quality throughout the volume.
Dub vs. Sub
Both tracks were done well enough but I’m still having some issues with the dub cast. It’s certainly not that I think the cast did a poor job with this but I can’t help but think that the sub casts voices match the characters that much better. Both casts did a good job but I’m really recommending the sub cast for this anime and leaving it at that. I think my primary example of this would just have to be the dialogue coming from Cole Howard as Ueki. For some reason the dialogue and voice matched with the character animation on the screen just doesn’t match for me which makes the viewing experience a bit harder to deal with. The performance isn’t bad; I just can’t get behind the director’s choice of voice direction for this character, not yet anyway.
Extras
Clean closing animation.
Overall
This volume really impressed me more than the first one did and that took me completely off guard. When I first saw this anime I had a deep sense of foreboding that I was going to be stuck pushing my way through another series that I couldn’t stand and was going to be forced to try and find good things about an anime that resembled a sinking ship but with this volume my expectations were turned around and I was happy to find something that I could enjoy. With my expectations wiped clean, I can now enter the third volume of this anime with curiosity about where it’s going to head next now. Recommended as long as the anime can keep me on my toes a bit.
Final Grade: 84% - B
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