|
Digital Downloads
|
|
Written by maehara
|
|
Tuesday, 08 April 2008 16:00 |
 The start of a new era in anime, some would say - BLASSREITER is one of a pair of shows from GONZO that are being made available for legal download with English subtitles on the same day that they're broadcast in Japan, with prices (thanks to a variable pricing scheme) running from free to whatever you're happy to pay. So how much is this episode worth..?
Meet Gerd Frentzen, the invincible motorcycle-racing champ - whose career is cut short when a rage-filled Demoniac interrupts a race, causing utter destruction. Gerd ends up in a wheelchair never to ride again, but he's one of the lucky ones - most of the race participants were killed, and a significant number of them went on to become the walking dead, under the influence of some sort of infection they picked up in the attack. XAT, a paramilitary group led by Gerd's former racing buddy Hermann, is investigating the attack and subsequent incidents, but they're not having much luck. Meanwhile, while Gerd wallows in despair at the life he's lost, he's approached by a mysterious woman who claims that she has the means to restore his physical abilities...
Your legal options for getting hold of this episode are three-fold - you can watch it for free on YouTube, you can get it in hi-res streaming and low-res DRM-free download for PSP or iPod from BostTV (approx £1 per episode - this episode is currently available free as a teaser), or you can get hi-res DRM-free download from Crunchyroll (honour-system for the hi-res AVI file, minimum donation of US$2 to add lower-res PSP or iPod versions). I took the BostTV option for this episode, and watched it on my iPod touch - and at the risk of turning this into an AoD-style technical review, the quality was just okay. The episode is windoframed, with a larger border at the bottom of the screen holding the subtitles. On the plus side, that means the subtitles don't get in the way of the action, but portable screens are small enough that you really don't want them being eaten up by black bars...
The episode itself is pretty non-sensical, to be honest. Demoniacs? No idea what they are, as no-one bothers to tell you - although no-one at the race seemed overly surprised to see one. XAT's origins and place in the military? No idea. The person who gave Gerd his miracle cure? No idea. Presumably this will all be revealed in the next episode or two, but for now it's just a string of scenes thrown together - only Gerd gets any sort of real screentime, while they try to get you to feel some sort of empathy or sympathy for his situation. That doesn't entirely work, either, as it's like watching the video of an old country music song where everyone's walking out on the singer, leaving him alone to feel sorry for himself. Awww.
Poor CG doesn't help, either - even at the poor resolutions used here, it just looks wrong. The physics is off, it doesn't look right set against a more traditionally-done background, and it doesn't convey any sort of illusion of reality. Disappointing.
I went into this episode wanting to like it - I'm quite partial to GONZO's usual style-over-substance format, and the last series by co-producer Nitro+, Demonbane, was so far into so-bad-it's-good territory that I couldn't help but love it. BLASSREITER is starting off badly, but without being so bad that it generates the Demonbane effect, and I was left with very little incentive to watch the next episode.
That said, when I can watch it on YouTube for nothing, I could still be tempted - but if GONZO are truly testing the waters for new distribution methods, they could have chosen a better show to do it with...
Watch this episode
|
