BEET THE VANDEL BUSTER
Reviewed by Dan Peterson |
| Synopsis |
| I'll admit it: I have a very high affection for Shonen Jump manga and anime. Come on, who doesn’t love Dragonball Z, Naruto, and Rurouni Kenshin? So I decided to check out Beet the Vandel Buster since it was from the same group. This one must live up to those same expectations, right? Anyway, Beet is the story of a little boy named….Beet. He lives in a world that reminds me far too greatly of Ragnarok the Series, .Hack, and Digimon…but anyway, the world is overrun by these creatures called Vandels that sack, loot, destroy, and attack humans. There is a team of Vandel busters (those who fight Vandels) led by a guy named Zenon that fights these guys, but this team is attacked by the chief Vandel known as the Lord of Tragedy. He wipes out the group, leaving aspiring Vandel buster Beet on his own to get revenge. So far, up to episode 3 have been aired in Japan. |
| PLOT: 30% |
| Yawn. That’s really all I can say. Boy gets fun weapons, makes new friends, fights evil monsters, and blatantly levels up. The dialogue sounds like it’s been cut and pasted from a book of “1001 anime clichés.” Overall, very boring, very predictable, and evidently very appealing to anyone who found Digimon and the Pokemon movies riveting. |
| CHARACTERS: 25% |
| The only thing that may be worse that the plot itself are the characters. Pull out every imaginable anime cliché: the dark, tortured member of the group. The headstrong little kid. The girl who lives with the little kid and will eventually love him but right now hates him so as to add sexual tension. All in all, there’s nothing new, fun, or interesting about these characters, and I can’t say I care for any of them in the least. |
| ART: 50% |
| Once again, I swear this was drawn by the same people as Pokemon and Digimon. The art is cutesy, overdone, and very childish. The Vandels look absolutely ridiculous, as do those who fight them. It’s bright and bold enough, and it may be that my overall disgust of the series has tainted my opinion of the artwork, but it seems to be subpar, though, to its credit, I have seen worse. |
| SOUNDTRACK: 40% |
| The intro annoys me to death. It has no memorable lines and sounds completely flat. The music throughout the anime is standard fare, and overall adds just the right touch of cheesiness to make this anime thoroughly bad. Shonen Jump, you have let me down. |
| CONCLUSION: 35% Overall |
| Avoid it like the plague. |
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