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R2 DVD Reviews
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Written by maehara
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Thursday, 02 October 2008 16:00 |
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Page 1 of 4  Here's something unusual - a show where we're further ahead than the US release. MÄR was canned by Viz after only a few volumes, which doesn't fill you with hope for the quality of the show - and neither did the first episode when I saw it myself a few years back. Will Manga's different release format save it from an early death..?
Ginta Toramizu's been having strange dreams lately, of a world called MÄR Heaven - even during class he's been know to start daydreaming and act out what's happening in his dream world. Cute female friend Koyuki features in the dream a lot (and no wonder, as poor Ginta's in love), but otherwise it seems to be a completely different world. Seems it's not entirely a dream, though - during class a gateway opens to the world he's been seeing, and Ginta gets the chance to pass through to MÄR Heaven. Seems other people have plans for him once he's there, though...
Of course, with this being a Shonen Jump series, you know that the setup is just provided as an excuse to get down to fighting, and MÄR is no exception. Across these 13 episodes, Ginta builds a small group of allies around himself and sets about defeating the Chess Pieces - an evil organisation that believes that conflict is the key to progress, and so every so often they start a war, wreck the place, then retreat back to their base in the face of the inevitable backlash. That backlash is usually led by the Cross Guard, except that during the last war the Cross Guard came close to losing and were essentially demolished. Alviss, a survivor of that war, is the man responsible for bringing Ginta to MÄR Heaven - aware that the Cross Guard's former leader was from another dimension, he used a Dimensional ÄRM, the Gatekeeper Clown, to bring Ginta to this world.
"ÄRM?", you say. They're artefacts, appearing much like pieces of jewellry in their inert form, but activate them and they can be sources of huge power. Dimension ÄRMs allow for teleportation and the like; Holy ÄRMs for healing; Battle ÄRMs for offence and Guardian ÄRMs for defence. Ginta comes into posession of the Battle ÄRM, Babbo, very shortly after his arrival - and Babbo, natch, isn't any ordinary ÄRM, no. For a start, he can talk; he's also powerful enough that someone felt the need to seal him away, until Ginta unwittingly broke that seal. Put them together and, with a little training, you have a formidable fighting pair with which to take on the Chess Pieces.
Let's not forget Ginta's allies. There's monkey-boy Jack, out to prove that he's not a coward by joining Ginta's fight; beautiful Dorothy (aka Dorothieve - guess what she does for a living) who appears all cute and friendly when she's around Ginta but hides real power beneath her harmless exterior; Snow, a young princess who Ginta rescues and who has an unusual connection to Koyuki back in the "real" world; and Alan, the former #2 of the Cross Guard, now cursed to spend his life sharing a body with feeble dog Ed. It's a varied bunch with varied powers, and they work quite well together, even if none of them really stray too far from established archetypes.
In tone, the show is clearly aimed at a slightly younger audience, with the combat not being too hardcore and there being a decent vein of humour running through it. Babbo's as annoying as any mascot character without being as cute or cuddly & Jack is pretty much a waste of space, but the rest of the characters all have a certain charm about them that helps the show become reasonably watchable after the first few episodes of setup. This is where the UK release format scores extra points - the first 4 or 5 episodes don't really provide anything that would really grab you and could well put people off following the series. The 13 episodes in this set gives you a lot more of a grounding in the characters and settings, and much more of a feel for how the series is going to play out, and by the end of the set I was a lot less negative about it. I still can't claim it's in the "must watch" category, but it's also not the complete disaster I was expecting when I started.
The volume ends with the war getting underway and Ginta and his allies beginning their fightback - small-scale skirmishes at the moment, to be fair, but they're making the effort. I'm still not sure about the show's long-term appeal, but at least I'm not dreading the arrival of the next set, either.
For full episode summaries and screenshots, check the following pages.
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