Soul Link - Reviews

Ok, where to start?  I have to say, I dont think I have seen an anime as bad as this one, or at least not in a long time.  Really I wish I hadnt ever watched it, but I did and now Im gonna review it just in case someone else was thinking about watching it.

STORY:

The story in this one is so back and forth and off the wall its genuinely impossible to try and summarize.  But lets just say it starts out with a terrorist attack on a space station and then gets weird, and THEN gets tripping on acid weird.  I mean plenty of animes have strange plot devices or magical abilities but this one manages to start out completely realistic and then in one episode turn into Inception meets Alice in Wonderland.  And if that wasnt bad enough, parts of the plot are just plain moronic.  Like seriously, after hijacking a military space station with tons of heavily armed mercenaries and threatening to nuke the entire world with the ordinance on board, youd think that they would have some serious demands right?  Well at first they demand the release of political prisoners belonging to the group they are apart of, but REALLY all they want is money.  I swear to god... in my head I was hearing; If you dont give us TEN BILLION MILLION DOLLARS, were gonna blow up the whole world... no, no... you can just wire it to my Pay-Pal account.  Im just at a loss with this one.

ANIMATION:

I would seriously be ashamed if I was an animator for this one.  The actual art is pretty good, simple but well done.  But it looks like it was animated by a two year old.  Im pretty sure they paid a decent artist to draw every ten frames or so and then got some art school dropouts to fill it all in.

SOUND:

The sound was decent at best.  Nothing stood out much more than that.  The music was barely noticeable but it at least usually fit the scene.  The sound effects were passable but nothing special.  But the voice acting was worse than some english dubs Ive heard.  The male lead sounded like a twelve year old homosexual whose balls havent dropped, the females were all whiny and were either screaming or crying the whole time, and pretty much everyone else was just monotone the whole show.

CHARACTERS:

I do not think I have ever loathed anyone as much as the lead in this show.  As I mentioned before, he constantly sounded like he was gay and about twelve years old, he was whining more than any of the women (which is a hell of a feat but in fact on more than one occasion, one of the female cast would sack up like they had more testosterone than him) and Im pretty sure I could find more spine and/or testicular fortitude in a cup of Jello.  And everyone besides his brother and the other military or mercenary people were the same way.  Seriously they were supposed to be MILITARY CADETS and between the five of them they could only muster about as much courage as a six year old.  At one point you can almost hear the lead thinking "but, but, do I HAVE to take this gun and shoot at the terrorists who are trying to kill us?"  And dont forget the girl who only joined to follow her boyfriend (and she follows her boyfriend around the entire show), or the other girl who youre sure is totally lesbian with her best friend (who she keeps almost getting everyone killed trying to save) until she ends up with a guy (the WHOLE show they keep showing more and more of a flashback from a secret meeting on board the station, and up until the VERY END I keep thinking the last one is going to show them kissing, friends just arent that close), OH and the father who doesnt let his daughter he abandoned as a child know who he is until the VERY end. 

I really wish I could adequately write how horrible this anime was.  Unfortuantely I do believe the human language lacks what it would take to describe this.

Right, it's confession time for me. If you have been reading my reviews than you may have noticed that I tend to rip the anime a new one. There is a reason for this though and it has to do with the fact that I can't turn my brain off when watching anime. I can't ignore the stupid shown in the anime and this is a problem as most anime are very stupid indeed.

In this case I'm not talking about a 90 pound girl catching a multi-ton cruise missile and throwing it back. Yes, it is stupid but it is a stupid that I'll allow. It's anime. Things like this are normal here and I'm pretty much fine with it. It annoys me to be sure but I will not rant about it.

So, having explained this lets rip into this anime shall we? Just a heads up: There will most probably be spoilers. The more I hate an anime the more spoilers there will be.

ART: Art is overall fine, it does its job at showing what is going on and you are never confused about what is happening. The CGI sucks but they did use it in the right places so that it wasn't that obvious. Basically any outside shot of the station and vehicles are CGI.

SOUND: Again no complaints from me. I can no longer remember any of the music used but this is how I prefer it. Voice acting were decent even if they get to do the same thing over and over.

CHARACTERS: Main character is Ryota. He is a third year cadet who has a crush on Sayaka, who is in the same class. He tries hard to help everyone close to him and often gets in trouble because of it.

Sayake is in Ryota's class and has some relationship issues after her father left her when she was a child. Her biggest friend is Aya, who agreed to meet her on the station.

Nao is a fourth year cadet and a chilhood friend of Ryota and his brother Shuhei. She is deeply in love with Shuhei.

Shuhei is the older brother of Ryota and he is considered to be a genius who was promoted ahead of everyone else.

STORY:  Ryota is a third year cadet at the military academy and goes out to the space station Aries. There things go quickly out of control when terrorists attack the station. Fortunately some cadets, with the help of Shuhei and one of the instructors put up some resistance. When a mysterious virus starts killing everyone things take a nosedive and they realize that more is going on then meets the eye. Especially when the dead start to rise.

RANT: After my previous 2 anime were deadly boring, I was ready for some action. I looked at the box and read: Space station, under attack by terrorists....Allright. Cadets putting up resistance....Hmmmm, very large chance for annoying moe characters. Virus changeing people into zombies? Uuuuhhhh....Ok?

Holy shit what was this anime stupid. Think Norn9 levels of stupid and you'll get the gist of it. Things happen for no reason, people constantly do stupid things and one in billion chances are certain to come out.

It starts on Earth on the spaceport where the cadets assemble and you get introduced to Ryota and Sayake. Sayake is looking for gate 2, from where the shuttle will take off but can't find it.

This is of course usually the case for large areas designed to process a lot of people on a dayly basis. Everone knows that little things like signs are useless in these settings so there appearently aren't any but whatever, moving on.

Sayake runs into Ryota and head over to gate 2 as he can read the signs where she can not. This is where they run into Nao who is also lost.... what is it with the layout of this port? Anyway she is a fourth year cadet and also on her way to Aries but she has to use gate 7.

At this point I start to wonder why there are 2 shuttles going to the same station, at the same time but I'm not a rocket scientist so I'm going to let it slide.

Although both a late, Ryota decides to escort Nao to her gate instead of pointing her in the correct direction. However I see his point later when they run into someone from Ryota's class who is going up by private shuttle and.... ok, there are now 3 shuttles leaving at the same time to the same station! Anyway, they talk and the question comes up where Nao is heading. She confesses that is quite lost and I believe her as she is looking around trying to see her gate. Considering that they are in a hallway and she is looking back to where she came from, I tend to believe her claim to being lost. I believe her to be a braindead moron and this is also true as later evidence shows.

Things do not improve as they get to the station. Sayake has agreed to meet her bestest friend, Aya, on Aries but there is a problem. There are no visitors allowed in the cadet section and cadets are not allowed to leave their wing. Everyone is very shocked by this and I wonder why.

Both are third year cadets so surely there were familiar with this rule or been notified about it. Well maybe this is the first time they went to the station as the first and second year cadets are stationed on Earth and.....never mind, first year students also go to the station. I can only come to the conclution that our main characters are idiots.

Speaking of idiots, lets talk about the terrorists. Their plan is to sit in space with nuclear weapons and threaten the powers that be into releasing prisoners. To do this they attach their ship to the station and take it over. This ensures that they are now a stationary target instead of a mobile one who can drop warheards from any orbit they chose.

Then Shuhei comes on board and Nao becomes scary. She reacts like her panties are immediately dampened and she is ready to pounce on Shuhei. I wonder of she likes him or something.

I loved the part on Earth where Shuhei dropped some packages and someone managed to step on them. Shuhei is a bit miffed at this and tells him to sod off and that it is his own fault for not taking care of his shit. Here is the problem though, she is a first year cadet and that places her at the very bottom of the totem pole. Shuhei is a commissioned officer and he is in uniform. This discussion should never have happened. The proper response would have been to apologize profusely and pray that he won't make your life a living hell.

The military side was hilarious in this anime and I believe that the writer had no idea what (s)he was talking about. People constantly leave their posts and command does not intervene or punish. At some point only the cadets are left and they have a little meeting to decide who takes over. Let me be very clear about this: the army is not, nor will it ever be, a democracy. When the leading officer decides to fuck off he appoints sommeone to take over. When he does not then it comes down to chain of command. When everyone has the same rank then it comes down to seniority. Looking at the group that is left this means that Noa was highest in rank.

Shuhei is a genius. This fact is hammered home every chance the anime gets. I found it therefore hilarious that when he gets infected with the virus his first action is to go and fuck Nao. This is no joke. He notices that he is infected with something that affects him physically and decides to head over to the terrorists but not after fucking the shit out of Nao because they are madly in love and he wishes to marry her.

I laughed my ass off when they discover a young child the next day that appears to be their daughter. So they fuck, he leaves and they discover the child. No, not in Nao's room. Not close to her room. They find the child one floor down in a previously locked storage area. She appears to be in her early teens, fully clothed, and fluent in Japanese. Genius writing!

The entire anime is filled with these knd of things. If you are interested in watching make sure to invite a lot of friends and make sure that there is a lot of alcohol present.