R.O.D

Image from: http://myanimelist.net/anime/209/R.O.D_the_TV

Name: R.O.D , Read or Die, Read or Dream アール・オー・ディー ザ・ティーヴィー
Prequel: R.O.D OVA

Status: Completed
Episode: 26
Release Date (for eng subs): - 


Summary:

Five years have passed since the occurrence of the incident known as the "Human Annihilation Mission." In Japan, a novelist is dealing with writer's block after her friend has gone missing. In Hong Kong, three sisters, masters in the use of paper, run their own detective agency to solve cases that involve books. When these people are brought together, a bond greater than blood is formed - a bond that will be sorely tested by the evil powers intent on taking over the world.

Join Anita, Maggie, Michelle, and Nenene as they travel the globe in order to save the world from the evil mastermind, Mr. Carpenter! Of course, that's if they can find the time to put down the books they're reading...

Summary Source: RightStuf
Summary from: http://myanimelist.net/anime/209/R.O.D_the_TV


Personal Ratings: 3

I watched this anime quite some time back, than I forgot all about it. Then I saw this youtube recommendation videos for anime, and suddenly this popped up, and I was like "ehh.. I remember seeing this before..." and yea... I started watching it... Ok so on to the review!

Unique anime; you know I find it quite ironic that the most unique animes comes from older series, and not the newer series...

I actually quite like the first few episodes, because of the amount of action they put in it and also because of the uniqueness of using papers as weapons. But of course that excitement slowly died down after a while as I got use to the setting of the anime. However, what really got me really annoyed was the sudden appearance of a group of people with different type of powers. At first it seemed like there was only 2 groups of people; normal and paper master, but who knew that there were more than 10 groups of people with powers. Of course they did explain to us about how these people came about, but I thought that they could have include more people from those diffrent groups of powers into the anime. Because it seemed as if there were way more paper masters than any of the other people with powers. So that sudden change really didn't appeal to me. If they have had let us known of the existence of the other powers from the start, I think it would have been better. 

Another bad side of this anime would be that there is too much exaggeration. For those who have read my reviews, especially on comedy-type anime, I'm sure you would know that I hate it when they exaggerate too much. It really gets on to my nerves when it all turns out to be not as bad what they made it seem to be. I thought that it really applies in this case, because the whole time Anita was really just making a big fuss out of a small incident. I thought that they could have came up with a better background story for Anita's phobia of books. 

I can see that they are trying to link the whole all of the involved character together with one incident, but I thought that given Anita's huge reaction toward fire and books, that the background story should be that much bigger of an impact towards the viewers too. 

Another one other thing would be the pace of the anime. Even though starting from the beginning they already had the main story line rolling, I thought that most of the main things happened in the 2nd half of the anime, and some parts in the first half felt kind of boring. Also, given the huge impact that they gave us in the first 2 episode of the anime, it just kind of felt like the rest of the anime just wasn't up to par. So you could easily get bored in the 2nd half of the anime. 

Lastly, I thought that this anime was more brute than I thought it would be. Just tone down on the ecchi side would have been better.

As for the positive side of this anime, I thought that the fact that each mission, that was given to the sisters, was linked with the main story line a good thing. Usually there would be a few episodes which has no link to the main story line (especially so in long on-going series e.g. Naruto, Bleach, Shaman King, etc) but to be able to make use of each episode so efficiently is quite something, though of course it maybe because of that that the anime somehow became a little boring in the middle (like there were not breaks in between to let facts sink in). 

Of course for some episode, there was no choice but to be a little boring, since the explanation was needed in order for the viewers to fully comprehend whats happening. However, I thought they could have been more expressive in their illustration. There are many animes that is full of words, but are not boring, that is usually because their illustration really helps the viewers to quickly comprehend things, as compared to audio. (one good example is Hyouka).

Other than that, I thought that it was really quite fun and interesting to see how they use paper to overcome the people with the other powers. Some really unique and out of the box ideas of how they use papers.

Art Ratings: 3.5

Quite the typical art for older anime series. But I really like the character design. I thought that it really brought out the personalities of each characters. Except for Junior (he looks way too much like a girl, took me a while to accept the fact that he is a guy.)

Recommended for:
Gender: Both
Age: 16 and above
My Ratings: NC-16