T w e n t y S i d e d

I really disliked Read or Die, although I seem to be in the minority on this one. This is a popular series. One thing I will say about it though: The opening credits are outstanding.

The music is great. It captures the best of the Bond-movie vibe, and it really gets the show rolling. Najica Blitz Tactics tried the same thing, but the music wasn’t nearly as good. The ROD music is heavy on the bass guitar and strings, and goes easy on the horns. Najica goes for broke with the horns and the result is a bit grating.

The technical aspects of the art are impressive. In one shot, we see the city reflected on the side of a building. If you look closely at the the screencaps you can see that the windows are not perfectly coplanar, meaning they reflect at ever-so-slightly different angles. This looks impressive enough as a still picture, but the camera is moving in this shot and the results are wonderful. I imagine this is hard to pull off. In another shot, they do the classic “time lapse” view of a city intersection, where the cars rush past in a blur as the daytime shadows slide over the buildings. We see this all the time in live-action movies, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it done with animation.

The art style is great as well. The characters are like the classic Bond / Avengers protagonists of old: Reserved. Cool. Stylish. It’s light on the action shots (although there are a few) and mostly focuses on showing them standing around in dramatic poses. It works. The first time I saw them, I was looking forward to meeting the characters and seeing them in action.

Finally, the big eye catcher in the opening is the naked girl with the writing all over her. This is unrelated to anything we see in the series. She doesn’t even seem to be any of the main characters. She’s just there for the same reason James Bond movies have all the curvy silhouettes in the titles: They are there because the animators know who their audience is. (It also makes it seem like the show is going to be very racy, but it isn’t. In terms of fan service, the show is very mild.)

Sadly, this OP shatters my long-held belief that any series with a good OP will in turn be good. There are plenty of shows with terrible OP’s that are good anyway, but this is the first show where I loved the intro and hated everything after it. This is the ultimate counter-example to the theory: It’s one of my favorite openings and one of my least favorite shows.

Steven left a comment here about ROD the TV series, saying:

[…] the OP promises much that the series doesn't deliver. (In fact, it shows a lot of action scenes which look like they're probably from the series, but don't turn out to be.)

This opening for the OVA has the same effect. It makes the show look and feel cooler than it really is. Very few of the images in my montage here are part of the series itself. The OP feels like it belongs to another, cooler show from which this one was derived. I think it oversells what it has, and might have been one of the reasons the show annoyed me so much. I kept expecting the show to live up to the excitement and intrigue promised in the opening, and it never came.

By contrast, the closing credits are quite boring. White text. Black background. Forgettable music. It’s just as well. They would have to come up with something pretty impressive to keep up with the opening credits.

For those who haven’t seen it, you can watch the Read or Die intro here.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Left: Lila the robot girl Humaritt Right: Najica

The big surprise recently is about how well Najica Blitz Tactics turned out. After watching the first disc I was amused at the density of fan service. Now that I’ve seen disc 3, I’m impressed.

In some ways it reminded me of (don’t laugh) the Isaac Asimov book I, Robot. The book started out with a few rules about how robots work – the classic “three laws” – and then explored numerous possible situations that might arise given those rules. The rules here are entirely different, but Najica has a similar approach.

In the first few episodes they introduce us to Najica as she teams up with a robot girl (a Humaritt) named Lila. Their missions involve rounding up other Humaritts.

At first Humaritts have no real impulses of their own. They pretty much just stand around and wait for orders from their master. My own understanding is that over time they learn to anticipate what sorts of orders their master is likely to give them and act accordingly, thus giving them the appearance of independant thought. In effect, masters “raise” their Humaritts a bit like children (ok, very strong, deadly, and overly literal children) through interaction. Depending on how they are taught, a Humaritt may end up acting just like their master, or they may turn out very differently. It mostly depends on what they are taught and how deliberate their master is about it.

Each episode they encounter another master and another Humaritt, and they see another outcome of the Master / Humaritt process. Each situation is different, although some of them can be seen as explorations on the dangers of teaching duplicity to inherantly honest robots. Many problems arise from “do as I say, not as I do” type hypocrisy on the part of the master.

In one episode they must face a general who is attempting to overthrow the government of a third-world coutry. Her aide is a Humaritt. (And because this is Najica Blitz Tactics, the general, her aide, and all of her troops are all female. You just have to go with it.) Her Humaritt has absorbed all of her master’s idealistic rhetoric. She really believes that if you have faith in your cause you can never be defeated. She believes this in the literal sense, as in: faith trumps combat ability and numerical superiority. The general knows it isn’t true – she’s just keeping up morale. The troops know it isn’t true – this is just what you expect from a charismatic leader. But the Humaritt doesn’t know any better, and takes it all to heart. When at last she is confronted with the truth, the results are tragic.

How low can you go? I think the cameraman must have been a smurf. And a sex offender.

This is pretty deep for a show that I thought was a vehicle for looking up women’s skirts.

I actually think the fan service detracts from the quality of the story. I have a few friends to whom I would recommend the show, but I know the overabundant panty shots would put them off. My wife is usually very relaxed about fan service, but even she didn’t have the patience for Najica. That’s a shame, since it turned out to be a good story. Not that I blame her: If the tables were turned and the fan service had been aimed at females, this show would would have been endless shots of half-naked, well-oiled men with bulging crotches, and I would never have been able to make it though that.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

While going through my directory of screencaps from Read or Die, this caught my attention:

This is from the opening. Check out the sign behind Agent Paper:

Hmmmm….

What I like is that I didn’t notice this at all during the show. My eye just accepted this, even though it isn’t even close. There are no gaps in the words and there are an awful lot of less common letters stacked together. I’m surprised it never caught my eye.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.