December 24, 2013
Deadman Wonderland
So, rather than resuming episodic reviews, in this case I just went and sat through the rest of the series. It's been a while, so I don't know if anyone would pick up the thread for lack of relevance.
I will give the series credit on one point. It did NOT devolve into endless arena combat, but it does switch gears halfway through. After two fights, there's a bit of a wrap-up to the Takami Yoh arc - his sister it turns out is one of the "Deadmen" and he deliberately got into the prison to amass a huge amount of the Cast Points in order to buy his sister's sentence out. Unfortunately, once he tracks her down to the hidden G-block, he's told that prisoners there can not buy their sentences off. He is moved almost completely off the chessboard by having the living snot beaten out of him by one of the anti-deadman enforcers they suddenly introduce, called Undertakers.
Ganta falls in with a crew planning to bust out. And this introduces the reason I decided to finish watching, there's a girl with dark skin and almost-white hair. I really like that combination in Anime girls, I have ever since I saw Pirotess in The Legend Lodoss War. Doesn't hurt that she's fairly stacked, and she's the second in command of the group. Her blood power forms an impenetrable shield on her skin. It's kind of improbable that they had a sort of bar to hang out in off the G-block.
A little the worse for the wear after the big fight.
The plotters are taking advantage of a week-long inspection tour of the prison, during which a lot of the skeevier elements are hidden away. They have one super-hacker on the crew, and he's prepared a data drive full of evidence that will bring the place down. All they have to do is break out far enough to get it into the hands of a government official or member of the press.
Ah, they're so naive.
Their data expert is a traitor, actually a member of the undertakers, and it's all a setup. The data drive is not only a fake, it's an explosive device. They don't know this. While the leader and the hacker breach the control room to open the freight elevator for the others, the Undertakers make their move.
And at this point, they introduce one of the most improbable of characters, my disbelief had to be suspended by the neck until it stopped twitching. Clearly they must be borrowing from Bleach or something. The undertaker who shows up to take out the leader of the escape crew is a little 7-year old girl with a giant chain-blade axe twice her size that has no respect for the laws of physics. She has a background in punishment that makes Mommie Dearest look like Teletubbies, and apparently this led her to kill all of her kindergarten classmates for their deficiencies.
The leader manages to knock out the hacker, and drive off the girl and activate the freight elevator, which the rest of the crew takes, and which, naturally, leads them to a slaughter. He gets on the coms to warn anyone listening at the clubhouse about the data drive, but of course, nobody's there. Well, except Shiro, who, not having any blood powers (that anyone knows about) has been left out of the plot. With most of the crew dead, for some reason the Undertakers and their troops retreat. Shiro arrives via an alternate route, grabs the drive from Ganta's hand, and chucks it in a burning storeroom where it explodes. The fact that the store-room was full of flammables disguises the reason for the explosion, and Shiro's nutgirl logic is unable to explain why she did what she did. All Ganta can figure out is that she just ruined the escape plot, he punches her and they have a falling out.
There's a bit of business where the leader of the Undertakers captures and brainwashes the leader to be one of them, while the remains of the crew are held hostage to ensure his co-operation. The data guy comes in to gloat, reveals that the USB-like data chip was a fake AND a bomb, and that he was the one who edited the video that convicted Ganta, among other things. He also has a dislike for Ganta and wants him killed first, by two thug-like Undertakers who are given brief flash-back introductions (one raised by bears in the woods, the other an Ed Gein-like serial killer). The first guy Ganta fought, who wasn't in on the escape plot, whose blood forms sword blades on his arms, crashes in, kills the two thugs, and Says something about wanting to get in on the fight. "Who are their toughest guys?" he asks. One of the crew points to the floor, "I think they were." He looks very disappointed. Melee ensues, the squad is killed, that Data guy captured and beaten for intel. Dark/White announces they're going to break out anyway, and that demonstrating their powers would be enough to prove that something hinky is going on in the prison. Ganta is left out of the plan.
It's a prison, you'd think they'd have handcuffs or something, but no, he's HOLDING her hands behind her back. A fatal tactical error.
At some point, Dark/White is captured (after switching into some captured Undertaker armor - but her voice gives her away), along with Shiro, and unspeakable things are going to be done to them if they don't all surrender. But the crew sticks to the plan. Ganta, being out of the deal, goes to the rescue, and basically gets his clock cleaned. Dark/White is nearly killed by the brainwashed leader, who goes on to massacre basically everyone in the room, but Ganta interposes himself as a human punching bag when he comes after Shiro. Eventually though, he snaps out of it (cued by a bell Dark/White wears around her neck), and the leader of the Undertakers is defeated.
Three of the crew escape. The director doesn't quite care since none of them are on the official roll of the prison. Major Boobs, er, Makina, who with her data girl managed to get the goods on the director slyly agrees that everything is okay, but well, if there's a season 2, something might happen with that.
Of course, there was no season 2, and I suppose the Manga may even still be going. So it stops, but it doesn't end. Ganta and Shiro are reconciled, but they don't escape. Shiro had been revealed to have also been the Red Man responsible for it all, but only to the viewers. I guess she wanted Ganta to be with her to "play".
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I will give the series credit on one point. It did NOT devolve into endless arena combat, but it does switch gears halfway through. After two fights, there's a bit of a wrap-up to the Takami Yoh arc - his sister it turns out is one of the "Deadmen" and he deliberately got into the prison to amass a huge amount of the Cast Points in order to buy his sister's sentence out. Unfortunately, once he tracks her down to the hidden G-block, he's told that prisoners there can not buy their sentences off. He is moved almost completely off the chessboard by having the living snot beaten out of him by one of the anti-deadman enforcers they suddenly introduce, called Undertakers.
Ganta falls in with a crew planning to bust out. And this introduces the reason I decided to finish watching, there's a girl with dark skin and almost-white hair. I really like that combination in Anime girls, I have ever since I saw Pirotess in The Legend Lodoss War. Doesn't hurt that she's fairly stacked, and she's the second in command of the group. Her blood power forms an impenetrable shield on her skin. It's kind of improbable that they had a sort of bar to hang out in off the G-block.
A little the worse for the wear after the big fight.
The plotters are taking advantage of a week-long inspection tour of the prison, during which a lot of the skeevier elements are hidden away. They have one super-hacker on the crew, and he's prepared a data drive full of evidence that will bring the place down. All they have to do is break out far enough to get it into the hands of a government official or member of the press.
Ah, they're so naive.
Their data expert is a traitor, actually a member of the undertakers, and it's all a setup. The data drive is not only a fake, it's an explosive device. They don't know this. While the leader and the hacker breach the control room to open the freight elevator for the others, the Undertakers make their move.
And at this point, they introduce one of the most improbable of characters, my disbelief had to be suspended by the neck until it stopped twitching. Clearly they must be borrowing from Bleach or something. The undertaker who shows up to take out the leader of the escape crew is a little 7-year old girl with a giant chain-blade axe twice her size that has no respect for the laws of physics. She has a background in punishment that makes Mommie Dearest look like Teletubbies, and apparently this led her to kill all of her kindergarten classmates for their deficiencies.
The leader manages to knock out the hacker, and drive off the girl and activate the freight elevator, which the rest of the crew takes, and which, naturally, leads them to a slaughter. He gets on the coms to warn anyone listening at the clubhouse about the data drive, but of course, nobody's there. Well, except Shiro, who, not having any blood powers (that anyone knows about) has been left out of the plot. With most of the crew dead, for some reason the Undertakers and their troops retreat. Shiro arrives via an alternate route, grabs the drive from Ganta's hand, and chucks it in a burning storeroom where it explodes. The fact that the store-room was full of flammables disguises the reason for the explosion, and Shiro's nutgirl logic is unable to explain why she did what she did. All Ganta can figure out is that she just ruined the escape plot, he punches her and they have a falling out.
There's a bit of business where the leader of the Undertakers captures and brainwashes the leader to be one of them, while the remains of the crew are held hostage to ensure his co-operation. The data guy comes in to gloat, reveals that the USB-like data chip was a fake AND a bomb, and that he was the one who edited the video that convicted Ganta, among other things. He also has a dislike for Ganta and wants him killed first, by two thug-like Undertakers who are given brief flash-back introductions (one raised by bears in the woods, the other an Ed Gein-like serial killer). The first guy Ganta fought, who wasn't in on the escape plot, whose blood forms sword blades on his arms, crashes in, kills the two thugs, and Says something about wanting to get in on the fight. "Who are their toughest guys?" he asks. One of the crew points to the floor, "I think they were." He looks very disappointed. Melee ensues, the squad is killed, that Data guy captured and beaten for intel. Dark/White announces they're going to break out anyway, and that demonstrating their powers would be enough to prove that something hinky is going on in the prison. Ganta is left out of the plan.
It's a prison, you'd think they'd have handcuffs or something, but no, he's HOLDING her hands behind her back. A fatal tactical error.
At some point, Dark/White is captured (after switching into some captured Undertaker armor - but her voice gives her away), along with Shiro, and unspeakable things are going to be done to them if they don't all surrender. But the crew sticks to the plan. Ganta, being out of the deal, goes to the rescue, and basically gets his clock cleaned. Dark/White is nearly killed by the brainwashed leader, who goes on to massacre basically everyone in the room, but Ganta interposes himself as a human punching bag when he comes after Shiro. Eventually though, he snaps out of it (cued by a bell Dark/White wears around her neck), and the leader of the Undertakers is defeated.
Three of the crew escape. The director doesn't quite care since none of them are on the official roll of the prison. Major Boobs, er, Makina, who with her data girl managed to get the goods on the director slyly agrees that everything is okay, but well, if there's a season 2, something might happen with that.
Of course, there was no season 2, and I suppose the Manga may even still be going. So it stops, but it doesn't end. Ganta and Shiro are reconciled, but they don't escape. Shiro had been revealed to have also been the Red Man responsible for it all, but only to the viewers. I guess she wanted Ganta to be with her to "play".
Posted by: Mauser at
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1
I had previously missed your two earlier reviews.
The first episode was SOOO grim that I broke morale and changed the channel halfway through. I've heard some good buzz about it though, how did you like it overall?
The first episode was SOOO grim that I broke morale and changed the channel halfway through. I've heard some good buzz about it though, how did you like it overall?
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at December 25, 2013 03:58 PM (DnAJl)
2
I can't say that I'm a huge fan. There are a lot of interesting
background bits: The blood being powered by "Picomachines" of unknown
origin, the possibility that Ganta's mom was a researcher into this
stuff (My theory), but on the other hand, the whole thing was a
splatterfest, and a lot of things didn't make sense. "Well, he's
nihilistic and insane" is the cheapest possible motivation for a bad guy
(the leader of the Undertakers) who believes that death is the only
salvation, which is why he doesn't mind slaughtering his own troops. And they re-used Crazy-as-Characterization a few too many times.
The little girl actually became one of the more believable bad guys when, during the massacre of the troops, she got hit in the arm and ran off saying "This isn't fun anymore." Smart girl.
You've got a secret prison within a prison, with super-powered living weapons basically running around within the block unrestricted, where they are paired off in blood-sport games and the loser experiences organ harvesting for experimentation, while the winner gains nothing beyond company store credits and the chance to do it all over again? And the only physical control over them is a poison collar that kicks in every three days?
Yeah, that's not how I'd run the zoo.
They dropped the ball on some of the sub plots, like the security chief trying to find out what was actually going on. Planning for a second season that never materializes ruins a lot of shows, it seems. With that many Chekhov's guns on the mantle, some of them are going to remain unfired.
Shiro is on the one hand, kinda fun just with the sheer incongruity of her being, but she also gets a bit frustrating too. There was an insufficiently explored sub-plot between her and the warden (not the director) that could have shed a lot more light on who she was and why she was there.
Another bit of sloppy writing was the use of origin flashbacks, introducing bad guys and giving them a quick origin just before knocking them off, while other characters higher in the importance list got ignored, like Karuko (Dark/White), the only clue to her backstory is a still picture in the end credits wearing a pink nurse's uniform. I do like her as a character though, she's probably the best one in the show.
There's also an OVA telling the story of the blade guy from his time as a cop, where he used them to take on street gangs. This throws away the whole idea that this is secret research that the public doesn't know about.
The premise fails on an awful lot of levels, and the storytelling is pretty cheap. Although as sloppy as it is, to its credit, it doesn't backtrack, undo, or contradict itself. I doubt I'll re-watch it, but at least I finished it.
The little girl actually became one of the more believable bad guys when, during the massacre of the troops, she got hit in the arm and ran off saying "This isn't fun anymore." Smart girl.
You've got a secret prison within a prison, with super-powered living weapons basically running around within the block unrestricted, where they are paired off in blood-sport games and the loser experiences organ harvesting for experimentation, while the winner gains nothing beyond company store credits and the chance to do it all over again? And the only physical control over them is a poison collar that kicks in every three days?
Yeah, that's not how I'd run the zoo.
They dropped the ball on some of the sub plots, like the security chief trying to find out what was actually going on. Planning for a second season that never materializes ruins a lot of shows, it seems. With that many Chekhov's guns on the mantle, some of them are going to remain unfired.
Shiro is on the one hand, kinda fun just with the sheer incongruity of her being, but she also gets a bit frustrating too. There was an insufficiently explored sub-plot between her and the warden (not the director) that could have shed a lot more light on who she was and why she was there.
Another bit of sloppy writing was the use of origin flashbacks, introducing bad guys and giving them a quick origin just before knocking them off, while other characters higher in the importance list got ignored, like Karuko (Dark/White), the only clue to her backstory is a still picture in the end credits wearing a pink nurse's uniform. I do like her as a character though, she's probably the best one in the show.
There's also an OVA telling the story of the blade guy from his time as a cop, where he used them to take on street gangs. This throws away the whole idea that this is secret research that the public doesn't know about.
The premise fails on an awful lot of levels, and the storytelling is pretty cheap. Although as sloppy as it is, to its credit, it doesn't backtrack, undo, or contradict itself. I doubt I'll re-watch it, but at least I finished it.
Posted by: Mauser at December 25, 2013 10:56 PM (TJ7ih)
3
Oh! And thanks for adding me to the roll!
Bonus stupid writing bit: When the security chief and her IT girl are getting ready to break into the director's office to download all his secret data files, there's a scene with them in the locker room putting on skintight spy catsuits. Now, I have absolutely NOTHING against skintight spy catsuits (or non-spy, wait for the Muv-Luv review), but when you're in your OWN facility, where you have a right to access, wouldn't it be better camouflage to just wear your uniform? Getting caught in a catsuit really would only arouse suspicion. Well, not ONLY suspicion....
On the plus side, it is a great excuse for that traveling camera shot following the zipper as it goes from navel to neck, pulling the suit snug over those enormous breasts....
Bonus stupid writing bit: When the security chief and her IT girl are getting ready to break into the director's office to download all his secret data files, there's a scene with them in the locker room putting on skintight spy catsuits. Now, I have absolutely NOTHING against skintight spy catsuits (or non-spy, wait for the Muv-Luv review), but when you're in your OWN facility, where you have a right to access, wouldn't it be better camouflage to just wear your uniform? Getting caught in a catsuit really would only arouse suspicion. Well, not ONLY suspicion....
On the plus side, it is a great excuse for that traveling camera shot following the zipper as it goes from navel to neck, pulling the suit snug over those enormous breasts....
Posted by: Mauser at December 25, 2013 11:11 PM (TJ7ih)
4
I'm going to go with 'the manga makes much more sense' though many of the characterizations you listed still hold.
I'm going to go with 'the manga makes much more sense' though many of the characterizations you listed still hold.
Posted by: Tom Tjarks at December 31, 2013 12:26 PM (T5fuR)
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