Shaman King Rip Off... Sort Of
Anime Geek, Movie guru, into action flicks
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JUN
3
2007
Law of Ueki Vol. 1: The Battle Commencement —
Originally published on otakureview.netIntro
Right before I saw this anime I happened to hear 'Superhero' by Stephen Lynch… the irony wasn't lost on me either.
The Story
This story follows jr high school student Ueki who has been given a strange power by his equally strange teacher Mr. K. The power that was granted to him was the power to turn trash into trees right in the palm of his hand and the reason why he was given this power was to fight in the "Battle of the Supernatural Powers," against 99 other jr high school students who have also been given powers. Winning will give Ueki the ability to pick any power he wishes as his prize should he win and Mr. K will be named King of the Celestial World. The first episode will introduce you to this plus more than a few characters that we will be getting to know such as Ai Mori, the girl who has decided to help Ueki protect his natural talents.
The battles begin in the second episode. Ai is doing her best to protect Ueki from the other power users and the rules are simple. In the first round, the 100 entrants will be reduced to 25 and all you have to do to win your fight is knock out your opponent. The first battle is against Taira, who has the power to turn water in his mouth into fire but it also brings his first ally of sorts in Seiichiro Sano.
The battle in the third episode is against another power user named Hayao who has the power to turn cotton into stakes and then it's Li Ho who has a power but he's so powerful naturally that he doesn't even need it.
The Good And The Bad
The artwork was the first thing that really caught my attention with its very manga style and character designs which are sort of a change from the usual. The characters are all drawn with very straight lines and an abundance of shading. It's really interesting to see it used in animation when so few animes really keep the artwork so similar to what you might see in the manga. I'm not really sure how well it works in this case though since it's really only the characters that are drawn in this fashion and everything else has a very traditional anime feel including the backgrounds and various props.
The characters are interesting though with Ueki being so righteous despite the little addendum to his power which says that every time he uses his power he will lose one of his natural talents. It does really seem weird that half the power users we've met before have also chosen fairly useless or silly powers. I'm also curious as to why when he lost his talent 'to be liked by girls' it didn't affect his relationship with Ai.
With the writing though it all becomes a little odd to me because it seems rather silly to me that never once does someone who is not part of tournaments acknowledge powers that are shown to them such as in the first episode. Ueki takes part in two separate battles and uses his powers constantly but never once are they acknowledged for more than a couple of seconds, as though a teenage boy who can make trees grow out of his hands is a totally normal thing to be seeing.
I also found that the series became very repetitive and formulaic before long. With 13 volumes, I can't imagine the pattern changing too much over the next few volumes which worries me already since I'm already seeing this problem with episode starts, episode villain is set up, battle is fought, Ueki wins through one means or another and then episode ends and if we're lucky a little bit of plot development is thrown in which as you can imagine, led to a really boring first volume. It wasn't terrible by any stretch but I can already see how some people are going to be turned off by this first volume simply because of its repetitiveness. The easy example is to naturally compare this to a magic girl anime such as Wedding Peach or Sailor Moon but for some reason this one feels really different (besides the obvious reason of it's Ueki and not a magic girl transforming every episode).
Music
The opening and closing themes were very fun to listen to and really captured the spirit of the anime well. I really enjoyed listening to them and plan on adding them to my collection very soon. The background music was really hard to judge though because it blended into the background so easily. Perhaps the music could've stood out a bit more but from what I did notice, there's not much to complain about.
Dub vs. Sub
Always fun to listen to the Canadian VA's who work with The Ocean Group but neither cast really wowed me with their performances. They both did they best with what they had in terms of a story and script but no one particularly stood out as phenomenal or a performance that I would point out that someone needs to listen to.
Extras
Just a clean opening animation.
Overall
This first volume really failed to impress me and I can imagine that there were and are many viewers who are going to watch this first volume and then proceed to forget all about it instead of moving on. From what I hear, this first volume did a pretty good job of capturing the spirit of the manga and so in that respect, established fans should find something here that they can really get behind but if you're new to the series entirely like I am, I don't see any real reasons why you should get behind this anime unless you're pretty sure that it's going to get better. Despite all of the flaws that I've pointed out, I still believe there is potential here.
The story, writing and episodes ended up being rather repetitive and sometimes downright silly with it's storytelling but there is potential here as long as the series starts moving towards character and relationship development as opposed to just the same formula that it's already seeming to want to be stuck in. There's potential here but I'm definitely saying that it's a good idea to proceed with caution since it's already on thin ice.
Final Grade: 79% - C
Law of Ueki Vol. 1: The Battle Commencement is recommended by scorpioeyez
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