Oh! Edo Rocket Season One, Part Oneby Patti MartinsonReviews may contain information that could be considered 'spoilers'. Readers should proceed at their own risk. Studio
Credits Grade: 5 Seikichi is a young kid who makes fireworks and dreams of being the best and biggest fireworks maker there is. He struggles to realize that dream while living in Edo, where all frivolity, including fireworks, are banned from the city. Seikichi meets a strange young girl, Sora, who is an alien from another planet who wants Seikichi to build a rocket that will take her back to the moon.When I first heard of this dvd, I was pretty eager to watch it. However, the first episode disappointed me and things did not improve for me until episode seven or so. Seikichi is just another mouthy kid with big dreams, a character I have seen many times before. The unique angle of the fireworks was never really explored much throughout the 13 episodes I watched, which disappointed me greatly. It seems to just exist as crutch to hang the series on. The other characters fare about as well. Sora is nice young girl, but not very interesting her own right. She appears to be a normal human girl most of the time, but often transforms into a monster. Ginjiro, the town locksmith, has a double life as a Man in Black, member of a specialized group of ninjas who fight aliens. The secondary characters are little more than odd-looking, quirky people. My interest in the anime picked up a bit when it is discovered that the city magistrate is secretly harboring another alien similar to Sora and must satisfy her constant demand for fresh blood. While this development sparked up a rather dull series so far, it adds a bit too gruesome touch to series that seems to be a romantic supernatural comedy. It was jarring to see him collect blood from a victim in one episode, then, in another episode, see a comedy bit where characters are transformed into cats. There are monster battles, a kind of triangle between Sora, Seikichi and Ginjiro, the mystery of the blood drained victims and the building of the moon-rocket, but none of these individual plot threads were satisfying, nor did they satisfy when combined. A disappointing effort overall, and I am not tempted to watch the remaining episodes of this series. Written: November 6, 2010
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