Noein: To Your Other Self - The Complete Series, Vol. 1-5
by Kazuki Akane
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DVD Cover Information
Director: Kazuki AkaneDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); Japanese (Original Language)
Format: Animated, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 635 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-01-22
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Manga Video
Movie Reviews of Noein: To Your Other Self - The Complete Series, Vol. 1-5
Movie Review: The existence of self across time...
Summary: 4 Stars
Despite being an anime fan, my tastes tend to be within a certain niche; a familiar type of storytelling that lets me get into the show a lot more easier. As such, a horror series like Hellsing or Hell Girl might not reach to me as quick as something like Fate/Stay Night, Chrono Crusade or the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Noein's more of a sci-fi drama with action peppered throughout as opposed to an all-out fight series like you'd be expecting. This is a series that's meant to get into your brain and make you think rather than just offer simple thrills and despite a couple of flaws, the show was still fascinating in the end.
Haruka Kaminogi is a normal girl in school while her friend Yu Gota has been feeling down lately since his mom has been making him study frequently to prepare for exams and even going as far as to bar him from going out with his friends. While the 2 are out late at night along with 3 other friends, mysterious strangers appear and they all seem to want Haruka. Turns out they're from the dimension La'Cryma which resembles Haruka's timeline in the future while one stranger, Karasu, might be Yu in the future. With talk of needing the "Dragon Torque" and the mention of another dimension known as Shangri-La, Haruka and Yu have to save their dimension as well as all others in existence.
While the plot might sound confusing and the concepts of quantum physics, multiple dimensions with infinite possibilities and time travel might make your head explode, don't fear since the series is actually rather easy to understand once you're in the thick of it. Unlike most shows (Evangelion or Serial Experiments Lain anyone?) where you probably won't understand it even if you saw the entire series, Noein is just simply revealing its cards a bit at a time rather than obscuring them and making you wonder what it is you saw. It's even got some themes that are actually quite touching and make for good discussion points so the head messing isn't just for fun.
One thing I will say though is that this is a series where patience helps while watching. This isn't the kind of show where each episode will have a battle scene in order to keep you from changing the channel in boredom and not to mention several episodes actually deal with ideas of adolescence, planning for a future you have no idea what it would entail and the growing pains of expectations at a young age. When the fight scenes do kick in though, they are as cool and unique as they come and they become welcome to the show's pace though some might not like they're a little bit scattered and only showing up at a more sporadic place.
Instead of shows like from Gonzo or shonen titles like Naruto, the animation is in the realm of being unique if only because it's vaguely familiar of something you must've watched before but there's something different about it. Noein though is indeed a beautiful show with top transfer and while the use of CG is still noticeable as in other uses in anime, the 2D artwork works quite well and when things get a bit intense, the animation changes to a bit more artwork style with more thicker lines and kind of resembles the Kid's Story short from the Animatrix. The show also has a fantastic store with some pretty good opening and closing numbers but as usual the extras are rather pitiful. The usual textless openers and trailers (despite volumes being released over a period of time, it's still the same trailers included) and a little featurette spread out over the 5 discs. While I'm aware that anime features than to be sparse, it's also something to actually buy something with little added.
While I probably wouldn't have it on repeated viewing anytime soon, Noein didn't waste my time and actually kept me interested throughout so I say give it a shot; never know, might just like it.
Summary of Noein: To Your Other Self - The Complete Series, Vol. 1-5
Noein (2005) begins with an innocent ghost hunt by a group of 12-year-olds that expands into a potentially world-threatening experience. Although she appears to be a normal girl, Haruka is the Dragon Torque, whose powers preserve and threaten dimensions across space and time. The inhabitants of La'cryma and Shangri-La want to use Haruka's abilities for their own purposes. With only the friendship of the neurotic Yu as a shield, Haruka must overcome the Dragon Warriors and the masked title character. Noein mixes elements of Escaflowne, Evangelion, RahXephon, and other "magical girl" and fantasy series to create a program that suffers from both too much story and too little. The characters from alternate dimensions offer portentous statements about dimensions, time, and destruction; the Earthlings talk about quantum physics. But their speechifying does little to unscramble the plot. Although Haruka is the Dragon Torque, an Ouroubouros-like necklace appears around her neck, then disappears for no apparent reason other than to resolve story problems. Some episodes feel like filler, while major events end before they really begin. And having characters meet themselves at different ages creates paradoxes more problematic than most time-travel stories. The filmmakers clearly spent most of the budget on the computer-animated effects: The anthropomorphic ships of Shangri-La are strikingly original and disturbing, but the character designs suffer from inconsistencies. Noein will appeal to viewers who prefer splashy visuals to coherent storytelling. (Unrated, suitable for ages 13 and older: violence, grotesque imagery, brief nudity, alcohol and tobacco use) --Charles SolomonIn the near future, a violent battle takes place between the dimension La cryma (protector of humanity) and the dimension Shangri-La, bent on the annihilation of all space-time. A group known as the Dragon Calvary is dispatched through space and time, searching for the only thing that can stop the invasion: the Dragon's Torque. In the present, twelve-year old Haruka and her friend Yuu are contemplating running away from home when they meet a member of the Dragon Calvary named Karasu (Crow). He believes that Haruka possesses the Dragon's Torque and claims to be Yuu from fifteen years in the future...
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