Cencoroll is an anime movie, 30 minutes long, that was first showed in Canada (oh yeah baby) based on a one-shot manga by Atsuya Uki, so don't expect a sequel for this (hopefully just for now). One impressive thing is that it was almost single produced by the man himself.Alright, first don't get deceived by the picture, cause it's not a freaking mecha anime,because that thing is a white blob. Anyway, the story is basically about a guy (Tetsu) who has this white blob called Cenco that can transform into anything, soon enough his secret is found by his friend (Yuki). Basically strange things attract more strange things right? Well you're right because another boy with a same kind of monster appears in town and challenges Tetsu to a battle and instantly an unexpected battle starts. At the same time, another one of those white thing appeared on a skycraper, menacing the whole city, and forcing the National Defenses to mobilize.Ok after reading something like that any kind of person would be WTF? Nonetheless I was like that at first too, but the plot somehow intrigued me, since it was something new, something fresh. We get too much of the same genre of series now, like the Bleach/Naruto style I-must-get-stronger-to-beat-the-hell-out-of-my-rivals, the romance genre, that is simply too cliché, we always know what happens, it always gets boring after a while. Basically, the industry is missing new material, something that's going to completely feed our originality needs.And that's when white blob comes in, Cencoroll is something new, something so out-of-nowhere that it completely took me by surprise with its mind-blasting production. So let's get to the review shall we?Animation : 8/10Being an almost one-man production, don't set your graphical needs as high as 5 Centimeters Per Second, cause Cencoroll definitely doesn't have state-of-the-art graphics, but they do what they were supposed to do, simple, but not too simple, just right. Characters are well-done, but what's really lacking is the background. But then again, when he action kicks in, the animation gets way better, I don't know why. Good thing is he doesn't put those cutey-lovey eyes on all the characters, well that might be me only.
See what I mean? backgrounds Characters : 7/1030 minutes, that's the length of a normal anime episode, so how can you manage to actually develop the characters? Well Atsuya manages to do that, but only a little bit. Tetsu at first, looks like one emo kid, that keeps everything to himself, trying to keep his secret to himself only, but throughout the movie, he finally opens up to Yuki, who almost forced herself on him, after finding Cenco's true identity. Well for 30 minutes that's plenty of development I think.Story : 10/10Now this is where Cencoroll gets its true potential, the story. It's just so weird at first that it gets brilliant. It certainly is something different from all the other stuff we've been getting recently. Cencoroll offers something that's been lacking right now, surprise, you just don't know what's going to happen next, keeping on your couch for all the thirty minutes. Usually, a fight between monsters would happen in an open spaced right? like in a city, or even on plains or mountains, but what the hell, Cencoroll offers you a whole scene IN the monster. (that might have been a spoiler). And you know what? the characters aren't even fighting to be heros or anything, not for honor, not to be received awards. But they still fight, like two kids who fight just for fun.Sound : 7/10Nothing much to say here, the ending song was a nice listen, (Love&Roll from Supercell), voice acting was fine, not remarkable and not lame, just voiced with enough emotions. But the songs used in the movie were good, used at the good moments to build up suspense and then BAM awesomeness happens. If this get an OST, I might try to get it.Overall : 9/10Well I have to say that this was one of the most interesting finds of the 2009 year I have made (considering the major rip-off that the season 2 of Haruhi was). The major part that frustates me is the fact that Cencoroll is so short, 30 minutes is really not enough for an anime with so much going on, it's almost teasing us to buy the DVDs and get a huge fan-base so that they make more episodes of this. So if you have 30 minutes free, and you're looking for something new and fresh, you know exactly what you should watch. Just pray with me that they make more of this later on.The Good
- original, smart, simply greatThe Bad
- episode 2?
and if you're curious about this, here's the original first trailerhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXHX6w0IlBM&feature=fvw&fmt=18SCREENSHOTS (for Megan >_>)
and a bunch of them