I just finished watching “R.O.D. the TV” another 26 episode (no I don’t have a life) anime. It’s on 7 disks and each episode runs about 23 minutes and boy did I like this one.
This is somewhat of a sequel to the “Read or Die” movie but seeing the movie first is not required, however, this has spoilers for the movie. I love the premise of these stories, “paper masters,” or people who can manipulate paper to do almost anything. Need a cloths, a bullet proof shield, a bow and arrow or how about an airplane just use paper.
As with many series it starts simple and grows in complexity but the early simple parts do lots of character development and in hindsight plot development. The interactions between the main characters, three sisters, is great and the rest of the characters are no slouches either.
The episodes are actually all over the place in terms of presentation. Some are comedy, drama, action and combinations of those. There are a few illogical plot elements but does that really matter when the basic premise ignores physics? A couple of the episodes could have been pulled right out of “The Avengers” (TV show).
I’m not usually big into the fight scenes since most are unoriginal and last to long but that’s not a problem here. The fights are awesome in the way the sisters manipulate paper to win their battles. I think one advantage of having shorter fights is they animated them extremely well. None of the still shots with speed lines crap just nice fluid motion even when there are hundreds of pieces of paper flying around. The rest of the animation is also very good. Facial expressions are used extensively to convey much more than words.
The audio is also very good as is the English voice acting. It’s in Dolby 5.1 and makes pretty good use of the speakers but mostly up front. The music is a combination stuff you’d expect from a spy movie.
I’d say this one is a 5/5 or a “A+” unless you don’t like stories that need slower moments to build the characters/plot.
T.H.E.M Review