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Mirage Of Blaze Vol. 1: The Summoning
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scorpioeyez's Review
Eh, The Boys Were Pretty
Anime Geek, Movie guru, into action flicks
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JUN
6
2007
Mirage Of Blaze Vol. 1: The Summoning —
Originally published on otakureview.netIntro
I’d like it noted that while I did intend to review this series eventually, it got pushed up my list so that my girlfriend would stop nagging me about watching it.
The Story
In this anime, we follow the lives of Takaya and Yuzuru who share the ability to be conduits for ancient psychic energy and while Takaya tries to keep his eye out for his best friend, they still are thrown in the middle of a war that begun many years ago as ancient spirits from the warring states period of Japan have begun to re-enter the living world and it’s up to these two to save the world.
In the first episode of the series, the series sets itself up right away by introducing us to the characters that will shape the series. The man and woman who are using their powers to break the tombs of the long dead spirits and the two high school boys that will fight them. Yuzuru has been having terrible blackouts lately and it seems that both he and his friend have been seeing odd hallucinations including seeing a woman spontaneously combust into purple flames and yet remember nothing afterwards and have no damage to her body. When the two receive a visit from men named Naoe Nobutsuna and Danjyo Kousaka, their lives become drastically different as they learn something completely unexpected about themselves.
More of the truth about themselves is revealed in the second episode as Naoe starts to explain more about the truth Takaya. The truth about how he possesses the spirit of a feudal lord and Naoe possesses the spirit of that lord’s vassal which obligates him to serve Takaya in the battle that he is about to fight. Meanwhile, the mysterious woman in the hospital knows who she is and who she is after now that it has been discovered which body the spirit of her evil lord is possessing for his rebirth.
In episode three of the series, things get bad when the bad guys get the upper hand. The evil inside Yuzuku has been awakened and is now bent on world domination with his lady by his side. Takaya and Saori go on a rescue mission to get Yuzuku back from the evil spirit inhabiting his body.
In the final episode of the volume, a new underworld general makes himself known to the series and his name is Master Ranmaru. After hearing about the reincarnation of Kagetora in Takaya, he is now on the hunt for his enemy that he must defeat before the reincarnation can be complete and to do this, he enters Takaya’s high school as a student named Chiaki Shuhei only it seems that the only one who remembers that he’s brand new to the school is Takaya while everyone else seems to remember the two of them as best friend.
The Good And The Bad
The characters are drawn with very straight, dark lines which remind me of a manga style. The characters are drawn very beautifully which means that for the ladies in the crowd; there are bishies galore for you to oogle. The females in the series though didn’t appear to be drawn with the same kind of attention to detail which was disappointing to me. Yuiko in particular just looked no where near as attractive as she could’ve been, especially when she was compared on the same screen with Takaya. The females in the series are still very well designed though as are all the characters in this series.
The animation in general is well done though with nice use of selective CG animation. Not all of the animation is CG which is always nice to see but there is a fair amount of it that was well done.
The pacing constantly shifts from incredibly fast to painstakingly slow. The first episode of the volume really moved at a very brisk pace and it was over before I knew it but then the rest of the volume started and it just felt like it really dragged and didn’t really move that far. The first story arc only took three episodes and after that, a new one was started right away and then left at the end of the volume. I can’t help but think that the volume would’ve been better off with just the three episodes on the first volume to set up the story and characters and leave the audience with a clean start on the second volume with the brand new story arc starting and no pre-mature cliffhanger.
The story so far isn’t fabulous and it isn’t gripping me nearly as much as I really thought that it would simply because the characters are nearly engaging enough despite having tons of potential. Naoe and Takuya both have tons of potential to be very engaging and deep characters filled with mysteries but so far they aren’t showing the depth that any regular anime viewer knows will be revealed later.
Music
Media Blasters took a risky chance by dubbing the opening theme into English but I think that it worked for the most part. I haven’t heard the original Japanese theme song but I would be very interested in hearing it as I just can’t say that this original English version really grabbed me as much as I hoped it would. There have been some great examples of theme songs successfully being translated into English and still being great to listen to but this would not be one of them.
The background music was really hard to pick up on the volume which was another interesting thing I noticed near the end. It really wasn’t until then I noticed that there really wasn’t much to listen to. The music that was there tended to be very buried with the action of the series.
Dub vs. Sub
The dub cast boasts some well known names including Julie Ann Taylor as Ayako and Lex Lang as Kosaka.
Dub cast and script was directed and written by Lex Lang as well. I really can’t say that the dub cast was fabulous but they weren’t terrible. The main problem that I had was that the script was occasionally unintentionally funny which would completely kill the drama of the series, to be fair though the vast majority of the time it was what Steve Kramer as Shingen was saying and how he was saying it that made me laugh. This is a series meant to be watched in its subbed format.
Extras
Clean opening animation.
Overall
Overall I was really disappointed by this first volume. Maybe I would’ve enjoyed this volume more if someone hadn’t built this volume up as one of the greatest pieces of anime ever but it is a decent release and the characters shown serious potential to tell a deep story but I wouldn’t go in with very high expectations. Go in expecting to look at pretty boys fighting each other with psychic powers.
Final Grade: 77% - C
Mirage Of Blaze Vol. 1: The Summoning is recommended by scorpioeyez
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