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R2 DVD Reviews
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Wednesday, 06 April 2011 00:00 |
 If I say that Master of Martial Hearts is from the same person responsible for the latest instalment of the Ikkitousen franchise, you'll have a good idea right there of what you'll be in for. For me, invoking a connection Ikkitousen also invokes a certain sense of dread - and unfortunately, that dread wasn't entirely unwarranted...
1 - Destiny Sprints Into Motion
Aya Iseshima’s carefree existence takes a bone-crushingly violent turn when she inadvertently wanders into the midst of a sadistic, girl-on-girl martial arts tournament with an irresistible prize for the victor. Her freshly-pressed school uniform doesn’t stand a chance of surviving this pulverizing peep show, but Aya’s out to prove that she can take a pounding just as well as the other knockout beauties in this clandestine competition. If she emerges victorious from a series of fabric-shredding fights with titillating teachers, sultry stewardesses and mesmerizing maidens, her every wish will be granted by a mysterious jewel known as the Platonic Heart...
2 - A Reason to Fight
Aya is, shall we say, less than impressed at having been dragged into the Platonic Heart tournament, but when she returns to Miko's apartment to speak to her, she finds the place ransacked and Miko missing. Doubly confusing, the shrine next door where she's supposed to work claims to have no idea who she is; by the time the police arrive at her apartment it's been miraculously cleared; and the apartment owners are claiming that the apartment had been vacant anyway. Something strange is clearly going on. With Aya at a loss for where to start searching for her, she heads home while to consider her options - but it looks as though Natsume's "legend", that those who fail in the quest for the Platonic Heart are carried away to the Dark World, may be true. Aya's not about to give up on her friend, but her latest challenger in the tournament soon appears to stand in the way of her search...
3 - Three Sisters, Sworn Enemies
Aya's battles in the Platonic Heart tournament continue, but she's no closer to finding out who's behind the tourney or what's happened to Miko. She's also beginning to be a little scared of herself, and what she's finding herself capable of when fighting - but it's not like she has any clear way out, other than winning the tournament. All that, and Mrs Suma's seemingly inevitable disappearance, is a recipe for depression. As a way to try and cheer her up, Natsume gets her brother to invite Aya to a trip out to the pool - but trouble is waiting for them there, as three more Plantonic Heart combatants turn up and try to recruit Aya to their Organisation...
4 - Silenty, Like Secrets
As if she didn't have enough to deal with already, Aya now has to deal with the knowledge that Haruki - Natsume's brother and someone she harbours feelings for - is the person behind the Platonic Heart tournament. It's the revelation that finally seems to take the fight out of her, and her mother's getting ever more worried at her daughter's changing moods. Assuming the person she saw in the car really was Haruki, then why - and how - is he sponsoring Platonic Heart? There's no time to think about such things, though, as Aya's instructions for joining the semi-final soon arrive...
5 - Flames
Aya is facing her final opponent, a fortune teller who can read her mind a predict her every move - which makes it rather difficult to fight back against her. She can also see Aya's other thoughts - the ones that hurt her, the unsavoury ones - and she's not against using those thoughts against Aya, who's already in down enough form after Natsume failed to appear and cheer her on. Fighting alone is hard, and it's the unspoken thoughts that hurt the most - like the prospect of losing friends who think she's too violent, something that had happened before. Is that why Natsume didn't appear?
Right. What we have here is a series that's aiming squarely for the "guilty pleasure" category - it's got all the ingredients of a show that you take out after the wife and kids have gone to bed and you want a little lightweight, shameless titillation to round out the day: young women in a variety of uniforms (school, nurse, policewoman, airline hostess...), gravity-defying physical attributes, clothes that fall apart at the slightest touch, and a plot that, foru four episodes out of five, is so simplistic that brain power is not required. It's one of those shows where you can almost feel the (temporary) drop in IQ as you watch it - and that's not a bad thing. Detailed, intricate plots have their place, but there's equally a time and a place for something that requires very little thought. It also doesn't require much effort on the part of anime producers to pull that off - in theory, anyway.
On the surface, Aya is your normal highschool girl thrown into circumstances that she doesn't want to be in, for no reason other than wanting to find the friend she's just lost. Her best friend Natsume is equally normal - the reliable one of the pair, always making sure that Aya's ready for anything. Against them, an array of unlikely (and always annoying) opponents are arrayed, against whom Aya usually has no problem defending herself - while she's calm and kind on the surface, when back into a corner there's a dark side to her that is unleashed which usually makes her battles short and brutal affairs. If you like your violence bloody and bruising, then there's plenty here to see.
But while the idea is a good one, the execution lets it down extremely badly. I could do a shopping list of flaws: the two-dimensional personalities of Aya's opponents, the 'breast physics' that are completely unrealistic and annoying to watch, the way clothes shred at a simple punch (except for Aya's bra and panties, which seem to be made of something completely indestructible - this material does not, sadly, appear to be available to anyone else), and the way in which, for the first four episodes, the show doesn't take the time to explain anything, instead focussing on the fighting to the exclusion of all else. Even allowing for the titillation value of the fights, it's just annoying to watch.
And for all that I complain about the lack of plot for most of the season, when it does finally appear in the fnal episode, it turns out to have really been not worth the wait, as we get a convoluted tale of abuse, betrayal, counter-betrayal and revenge that is pulled out of nowhere - with no hints, no clues, no foreshadowing at all. It's almost as though, after finishing off Aya's final battle, the production crew suddenly discovered they still had twenty minutes to fill. "Oh, crap, how will we fill it!?" "I know, how about this...." I like conspiracy. I like plot twists. But I also like to at least get a little pointer beforehand to give you a chance of seeing what's coming, instead of the "epic" ass-pull that we get instead. The show is lazy, in terms of plot, characterisation and fanservice (which it just beats you over the head with). It's as shallow as it's possible for a series to be. For an OVA series, where you would usually expect the production values to be a little higher than the norm, it seems to have been done on the cheap. It ends on a cliffhanger so abrupt that you'll wonder if a further scene has been cut. It's all ultimately just lazily done, and it's as frustrating as hell - something a series like this should never be.
I've seen Master of Martial Hearts on the "worst anime ever" lists of a few people - it's not quite that bad (I've seen Eiken, for a start), but it has so many flaws that any hopes of sitting back and enjoying the show can pretty much be forgotten about. Not worth the effort.
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