Sora o Miageru Sho... Bah, screw it. Munto TV, hereby referred to as Elves, Islands and Valium, oh My!: Too uninvolving for me to write its full title.
Elves, Islands and Valium, oh My! is a TV anime based on a series of Munto OVAs made by Kyoto Animation Studios about a magical floating magic realm filled with elves in a constant state of inter-island warfare. One of these islands, led by a magical king called Munto, which will hereby be referred to as Elfypants McRidiculousHair, enlist the aid of Yumemi, hereby referred to as Valium Girl, who is a normal high school student from modern-day Japan and also The Chosen One!, so they can restore peace, magic surplus and good times with fuzzy puppies to their embattled realm. Oh, and to keep the Earth from being flattened by the ensuing debris should they fail.
Anyway, the result is a pretty... Errr... Mediocre offering, as I'll expound on in length in a moment.
Animation and Visuals: 6/10 – Shiny runes, lots of explosions, poor facial design and backdrops.
Elves, Islands and Valium, oh My! is at its core a high fantasy anime involving lots of high-powered magic fights: A high budget on things going 'splody and magical runes and shinies for dramatic power-building moments is pretty much a must, and Kyoto delivers, if not entirely to the standards of anything seen by more well-established studios like Sunrise, Bones or Madhouse. Large waves of explosions follow the firing of very visually impressive magical powers, there's lots of runes and some rather dazzling (but confusing) mid-air fight scenes; at its best, Elves, Islands and Valium, oh My! can give a Gundam series a few rounds in the ring.
Problem is, when impressive fight scenes are not happening, the not-so-impressive things start showing. The characters are somewhat sparsely modelled, most of them being mere variations on the standard human/elf template with the hair colours changed and bumps added to the front for females. The backdrops are rather primitive at times, and the visual effects equally so. Although it's certainly nowhere near Evangelion-level, I also get the feeling some of the still-image montages where thrown in to lighten a load off the animation budget.
Audio: 5/10 – Sparsely used but passable BGM, and voice acting flatter than a steamrolled Crepè Suzette.
The music in Elves, Islands and Valium, oh My! is a fairly decent orchestral ordeal, each employing about four instruments and being at a whole passable if nothing extraordinary, and is employed in most of the dramatic scenes and little otherwise, leaving many of the scenes to be carried by voice acting alone.
Which is where a major weak spot arrives; the voice acting. It is, to put it bluntly, rather lacking. The characters sound flat; none of the seiyuus seem to be able to infuse their characters with much life. You'd expect the titular Elfypants McRidiculousHair to have a voice that booms like the heavens; he's boring as all heck (making his use of the "Ore-sama" pronoun stick out like a sour note: Anyone sounding this unimpressive does not fit for using it). Valium Girl sounds like, well, both name and nickname ("Yume" means "dream") should give you a clue-in (even when the character is at the verge of tears, her voice remains unimpressive), and as a final insult, Norio Wakamoto is on the cast list and isn't allowed to cut loose either. His Obviously Evil Elfguy sounds rather downcast for the most part, disappointing me as I was at least expecting some overacting from a, well, Norio Wakamoto villain. It's kind of like hiring Nobuyuki Hiyama for a 'mighty hero' role and forcing him to whisper all his lines here.
Story: 4/10 – Things go boom. Somebody bought surplus philosophy montages from the Evangelion yard sale. Explains what goes on, but what does isn't very impressive.
So, Elves, Islands and Valium, oh My!'s story. I actually summed it up neatly in the introductory sequence: An alternate realm exists, bonded to Earth through some magical something-or-other, and it's filled with floaty isles inhabited by magical elves that persist through energy called Akuto, which they consume through basically everything. The only way these elves can get more Akuto is by taking it from the Earth; a problem since the magical bondy thingy has been shut down. Without Akuto, the magical sky kingdoms will soon crash into the earth and be destroyed. Naturally, in this darkest hour, they turn to an all-out war which consumes massive amounts of Akuto.
Meanwhile, on Earth, a few episodes are spent showing the natural surroundings of our hero the Valium Girl, who can see islands floating in the sky that noone else can. These islands, which do not eat ghosts and require black-clad people with swords to fight, and are not trying to hunt down Valium Girl to steal her grandmother's book of spirit names, are naturally the magical floating kingdom (although for some reason, she can't see the massive explosions caused by the war). Anyhow, this makes her the Chosen One, and one magical elf kingdom, led by her obvious love interest Elfypants McRidiculousHair, set out to bring her into their world so she can fix the whole thing. The result is a Valium Girl-centric story containing lots of fight scenes with only nominal plot importance, cliches from the high fantasy genre, act breaks containing plenty of faux-philosophic narration and "I believe in/I must protect you" all around, and little in the way of plot twists, innovation or high points, without being actually *bad* in any concrete way. It didn't exactly break my suspension of disbelief in any way; most likely because it was little about it to believe or disbelieve in in the first place; it was simply 'there'.
Characters: 4/10 – A Mary Sue on Valium and a Gary Stu on too much hair lotion. Not a pretty combination.
A major point of story problems behind Elves, Islands and Valium, oh My! for me was that the characters were so very bad at driving it. Though they acted the part and never really made me question their sanity (ok, that's a lie; I questioned most of their sanities, come to think of it), the main problem was that they were generally so unimpressive (helped, no doubt, by their voice acting) that I couldn't really see them as more than roles in the play; roles that just so happened to be filled by these characters. I couldn't bring myself to care for a single one of them as a person, and while I could *understand* their goals and motivations (mostly), I couldn't sympathize.
The main problem is that the two main characters, as you may have guessed from my rather unflattering nicknames for them, were very unengaging. Both had the smell of Mary Sue wafting off of them, being inordinately unique and special and having most of the story, and indeed their entire reality, centered on them as Chosen Beings. The act of being the Chosen One has been a cliche practically since the invention of the written storytelling media, and it's pretty much displayed without so much as even *trying* to put a spin on it. In addition, they suffered from personality lacks and an utter lack of charm. I couldn't bring myself to care, simply put. Like with the story, I couldn't even pick out much bad to say; they're simply 'there'. Fine, the story is basically character development for Valium Girl into something resembling a human being (and very stereotypical shonen-esque development at that), but we're talking 10-15 minutes of energy and actual drive out of a 9 episode series (and besides, it wasn't a very interesting focus for the story to begin with). No good villains were driving the storyline either; there was the poorly-Wakamoto-voiced Obviously Evil Elfguy and a few other battle-hungry maniacs, but they failed as antagonists on a pretty fundamental level.
Value: 4/10 – Probably intended mostly for fans of the OVA; certainly brings nothing to the table not already seen before.
Elves, Islands and Valium, oh My! falls in much the same genre as most RPG and swords 'n sorcery high fantasy animes I've ever seen (and is about equivalent in quality of most of them to boot); throw in the fighting of Code Geass R2 or Gundam 00 to the Tales of Symphonia OVA and I think the genre's been pinned down. It's not particularly new, it's not particularly original and it's not particularly clever either.
In addition, the first 6 episodes are basically the OVAs re-told, and the ending merely sets it up for what appears to be another series, which I will very likely not be watching, alongside not re-watching (and probably forgetting I ever watched) this.
Enjoyment: 4/10 – Meh.
I didn't find much to directly enjoy when watching this show; I am probably not lying when I say that coming up with those lameass nicknames for the anime and the main characters is probably the most 'fun' I had from the whole spectacle, aside from poking at the occasional plot hole and making snarky comments to myself while watching. On the flip side, there was little to actually *dislike* either, except for a few choice points of criticism from usage of anime tropes.
Total: 4.5 (rounded up to 5)/10 – Much less important than it seems to think it is.
So, after watching me take the piss out of quite a few elements of Elves, Islands and Valium, oh My!, I wish to try and clear some of this up in the end. This anime isn't bad. I have seen plenty worse, and I want you to know this. What this anime is, is ordinary. Normal. Run-of-the-mill, you might say. Failing to involve or repulse me is a good sentence. Watching through it is kind of like taking my weekly Bleach fix: Just something I do, without giving it much thought. I don't necessarily enjoy it, but there's nothing that really dissuades from doing it either.
As a final point of this review, I should say that I have heard rumors -- very likely unsubstantiated ones -- that Kyoto animation chose to animate this instead of working on the next season of Haruhi. As I said, likely unsubstantiated. If it is true, then that means the animation studio thought this more important than what I would basically consider a licence to print money. Now, it's not that I can't tell that Elves, Islands and Valiu... Ok, Munto is a labour of love by the animation studio, "done for the sake of the art" you might say. It very obviously is. And several of my favourite animes, including my very favourite one, happen to be of this kind too.
But frankly, in this case, I think the "art" could need an overhaul here and there. There may be the potential for true uniqueness underneath somewhere, but I think the obsession over its own self-importance have drowned that potential somewhat, underneath hackneyed plot points and an uninteresting cast of characters.
