Generally, it's your average mahou shoujo with a heroine who transforms into a magical warrior and fights evil. That's why some people would only give it 6 out of 10. However, this is the classics. This is a 'must see'. That's why other people would give it 10.
story and characters
After I said it's typical, there seems nothing more to add. You don't need to think hard to get an idea of what it's like. There is your usual Heroine, with a strong will and psychological trauma, her friend, no less positive in everyday life but vulnerable and cute too, the Hero - cool and daring at first but gradually falling in love with the Heroine and becoming softer, and the Enemy, in the person of a 'knight of sorrow' with a dark and tragic past, small vicious girl and betraying friend. Nothing new and nothing special. This is how it looks now. However, it was the year of 1999, the peak of the genre.
And still, being classic, 'Jeanne' doesn't fall into mediocrity.
In comparison with anime series that only try to attract customers by popular seiyuus and cute faces of little girls, 'Jeanne' offers a good story with understandable reasons driving the characters to their goals, and presents their troubles and their happy times in a way that moves the viewers' hearts.
Someone said that the characters in 'hapimari' were facing some real sh*t unlike trivial problems that school students have, like small lovers' quarrels etc. If I were asked what touched me more - 'grown-up' troubles of Chiwa and Hokuto in 'hapimari' or 'childish' problems of Maron and her friends in 'Jeanne'... guess what I'll choose?
The Heroine suddenly realises that the glory of winning the competition and the audience's loud applause are nothing to her if the guy she likes is trying to console the girl who lost. Is this trivial? Or is this serious? Everyone decides for himself, but for me it's all about how the authors depict the problems that characters face and the characters' attitudes, moods and feelings. It might be a trivial matter in essence, but it's all about how it's shown.
The Heroine suddenly realises that the glory of winning the competition and the audience's loud applause are nothing to her if the guy she likes is trying to console the girl who lost. Is this trivial? Or is this serious? Everyone decides for himself, but for me it's all about how the authors depict the problems that characters face and the characters' attitudes, moods and feelings. It might be a trivial matter in essence, but it's all about how it's shown.
I cannot insist there are no bad points in 'Jeanne', though. The story gets a little (very much, some would say, I guess) dragged in the middle, that is if you have enough patience to watch the beginning, of course, because the pace is really slow. In other words, if the initial episodes were good as an introduction, by episode #20-something one gets tired of this long row of short stories of how Jeanne meets new people, finds a demon, transforms and defeats it every single episode with less development on the part of the main characters. For this reason the anime really looks like it was created for younger girls than those who are close to the age of the Heroine.
However I had enough free time, and enough patience. And by the way, you don't always want to watch a psychological drama in the evening when you come home from work. Some mahou shoujo adventures is just right.
The reason is that even though the series became longer than the original (no way a 7-volume comic would be made into 44 episodes without any new episodes written specially), even though the story was repetitive, it also allowed the authors to pay much more attention to minor characters such as the family and friends of the main characters, their classmates, teachers, etc. Some of them were weird people too. Like a police officer in disguise
or a very determined gymnastics coach
music
It was around 2004 or 2005. The mp3 player I received from my father was my first player after a cassette one. Internet connection quality was still measured by speed - it was before the age when you could download a limited volume of information with an unlimited speed, to say nothing of the current system when you download unlimited volume of information with a not-so-limited speed. And the speed we had in our home was still 256. Music wasn't something to lay your hands onto just by googling. Japanese bands and performers seemed all great and so special. Then my friend meets me and gives me a copy of a CD with a small collection of Japanese songs that had been popular a few years before. Ayumi Hamasaki, Aiko, Day After Tomorrow, Chemistry, Lareine, Rina Aiuchi... Those names became sacred to me because I had nothing else to compare with.
Track #14 on that CD - Shazna's 'Piece of Love'. What a strange name, I thought. It wasn't particularly my favourite, because I thought it to be too bright, but after I listened to it several times, I realised I liked the song very much for its clear and sunny mood. What color was it? It has always been light-green for me.
Even though its bitrate was only 20 kbps.
I could not simply ignore that it's used in 'Jeanne', so I'd say I'm happy to hear it as an opening theme here, and I find it proper.
The rest of OPED themes weren't as enjoyable, but certainly complicated the general attitude of the series.
The OST was never released as a CD, so I was pretty sad about that, some melodies were really good. The characters' image songs are also very good. Of course it's not that the songs are extremely original or introduce something new, but I do believe that image songs in 90s and early 00s were much more serious, if I can say so. They were written seriously, not just to let the seiyuu pronounce some words into the mic.
graphics
It's common to draw characters close to how they look in manga, if there is one. Isn't it? At least it was 15 years ago. And I liked it. Though not a complete copy, the anime series where characters were made to resemble the mangaka's style somehow really do feel 'handmade', feel like they were created with love and care.
The backgrounds were usually plain but bright-coloured
The strangest thing that apart from Nishihara Kumiko, whom I knew from 'Sakura Taisen', and Kuwashima Houko, whom I remember voicing a completely different heroine in 'Noir', I knew nobody in 'Jeanne'. Chiba Susumu's name sounds familiar to me but it's not that I remember any of his roles in particular, but he did a great job voicing Chiaki. The greatest discovery was Matsui Naoko, voicing not only Maron's friend Miyako but also their teacher, which I did not realise until the second before the last but one episode, when Miyako's intonations changes together with her personality and some notes in her voice started to resemble the manner of speaking of ms Pakkyalamao.
The biggest surprise was, however, when I listened to the image songs CD and saw that the second song in the list just after the main Heroine's one is not that of her Hero, but of her classmate... The order of songs was not usual at all, but I was really surprised to hear that Takahashi Naozumi is really good at singing. It feels like I've started to forget that most seiyuus were pretty good singers those times.
conclusion
It's a story about young but strong people. And it's a very romantic story. As you see
No comments:
Post a Comment