Tactics Volume 4
 DJ Hufford  rates it:    Community rates it: (no ratings yet)
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Another week, another anime series. This is titled Tactics Vol. 4 and covers four episodes of the Tactics series. This series is highly acclaimed and won several awards. Unfortunately, my thoughts on this are not as glowing. Let’s start with the positives shall we?

This series is visually stunning. The artwork is flawless, simply flawless. It is drawn really tight, and almost gives the illusion of being produced rather then hand drawn. The coloring was as bright and as vivid as anything I’ve seen. They use a lot of stop motion techniques and extreme optical zooming to achieve dramatic effects.

Through the use of technique and coloring they really managed to squeeze emotion into every frame. The image of a skeleton engulfed in flames while dancing around a water well is very creepy and eerie. In the same respect some of the cute little cuddly animals come across as very personable and fun.

Now the art is all fine and well, but that’s only one aspect of the show as a whole. Unfortunately, it is here that the series lost me. The plot seems to have been derived from middle school kids.

Apparently in this world there are several factions of “beings”. There are humans, animals that act like humans, and hybrids of winged humanoids. At the point of the series I viewed all of these factions have merged and are trying to live in the same world together. As with any culture clash, there are oodles of problems and controversy.

They also threw in a love story, which made me feel very icky to say to least. One of the humanoid winged thingy’s has fallen in love with, and married a cute little barnyard animal thing. This thing looks like a dog, and a thing that looks like a human is pining for it? Umm…I guess technically its not bestiality, but it sure looks like it.

To top it off, the dog like thing as fallen for a human and now the wing thingy is jealous. The wing thingy vows to show his little dog friend that humans are stupid, and he embarks on a personal journey to make humans look worthless.

This is just as bad as it sounds. This title gets tremendous kudos’ for the artwork. But it gets a flat out F on story and plotline. Maybe it was just aimed at a younger demographic then myself. I can see kids and maybe some young teenagers enjoying this, but it doesn’t hold much for adults. The 2 ½ cans I’ve awarded this are strictly for the superb visuals and artwork. That alone was the saving grace that made this watchable.

Added:  Monday, April 16, 2007

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