mark76 - 2016-02-23 11:31:25

A Review of Aria The Scarlett Ammo

   Ah Aria The Scarlett Ammo, the first anime I ever owned, if there’s one sentence to describe it it’s that it’s so bad that it’s good. Now don’t let that put you off, it may be bad, it maybe have a bad ending but boy is it fun to watch with friends or just in general. Aria is a 12 episode long series that aired in 2011 and was animated by J.C Staff, who always seem to do a great job at making stuff look good. 

   Aria features an Acadamy that train people called “Butei” which is a line of work like the police force, where the students learn how to fight and prevent crime. The Butei are divided into different ranks by their skill, from E to S rank as well as having focus areas like sniping, vehicles and information brokers. The story follows our 2 main characters. Kinji Toyama, an rank E Butei  due to missing the third term’s final exam, and Aria H Kanzaki, a S rank Butei and a descendent of Sherlock Holmes. Though being an E rank, Kinji has an ability where he becomes as skilled and able as a s rank Butei by being sexual aroused, yeah and this is just the start of the crazy stuff.

   Not soon after deciding he wants to quit the Butei Academy he is attacked by the Butie Killer but is saved by Aria and the two go on to team up, setting out to track down the Butei Killer and uncover the people that framed Aria’s mum. Along the way the two team up with other students at the Academy like Reki, the silent sniper and Jeanne d’Arc, a previous enemy who helped frame Aria’s mum.

   Now I suppose I should talk about some of the things that make this series ‘so bad that it’s good’. First up is the most obvious point so far, Kinji’s ability to become almost better than Aria when he’s sexually aroused. This is explained as a genetic disorder that he’s inherited, so there’s that. Also there’s a fight with Dracula who is also a werewolf called Vlad The Bad, and lets not forget the ending, which just kinda stopped at what felt like half way through a season. 

   Now despite these main examples and Reki shooting a wolf in the spine in order to tame it, Aria The Scarlett Ammo is worth the watch if you want something silly and enjoyable to sit down to. Not to mention that animation and art style wise it’s very nice. The fight scenes are animated well and the overall art style is colourful and good. The soundtrack for Aria isn’t too bad either, I wasn’t too big a fan of the opening but the ending was pretty good and had some nice animated scenes to go with it. 

   Overall I’m giving Aria The Scarett Ammo a 7 out of 10. Had it not been for the enjoyment factor and for it being something you can just relax and watch I would have given it maybe a 4 or 5. I’d recommend it as something to try watching if you’ve got the day off or a friend over and you just want something silly to watch.

sigurd15 - 2015-09-11 22:52:42

Honestly this series could of be animated better, due to being based on a Light Novel they had much more material to use than they did, they rushed each arc say to fast, making the viewers drop immensely fast. Honestly if they'd slowed down, and worked a little more on the story in the series they would of easily made a second season.

eschinner - 2014-09-20 14:48:21

bstanton - 2014-04-23 05:24:52

This show, while having a few things I liked personally, was overall not great, or even really good. It is a fairly average show overall, but I did have fun with the show at times. However, it never really hooked me into the world, unlike nearly all anime I watch. Causing it to be just very forgettable and disappointing.

The Story-

It's a challenge to talk about the story. As I said, the show was VERY forgettable, so forgettable that I didn't think about the show after I finished watching it till I heard it mentioned in the forums. The story follows a teenage boy named Kinji who goes to a school to train teenagers to perform mercenary work (mostly as bodyguards). He doesn't really have a real power, just a bad ass alter-ego due to his inherited personality disorder that is brought out anytime he is "turned on", yes sexually. Yep. The story really doesn't stand out too much, it follows the main female protagonist Aria trying to figure out why people are attacking her due to her family's past with Kinji's help, but only follows that storyline for the most of it and really gets mixed around, thrown around, and hard to really follow throughout the whole show. Plus, it really just wasn't that captivating. It used old legends and mythical creatures as well, which was confusing at times, but it was the interesting part of the show, as it took a few different takes on some of the older tales and brought them into play with the story. I did find it cool that I knew pretty much all of the tales and stories it references to, but it really didn't add a whole lot to the overall story.

The Animation-

Not much to say about this either, it was animated fairly well, with a lot of really well done scenes throughout that really caught my eye. When it wanted to be cool, it was. And I really did like it all throughout as it worked well with the action scenes. Nothing that blows anything out of the water, but is still a pretty nice aspect of the show.

The Sound -

As an overall it was okay. The music was fair, the dub was fair, but I really just HATED some of the sounds the guns made. It sounded like they used really old wild west sound effects for some of the guns and even used it in the OP. While some may not really mind it, personally, I DESPISED it. Other than that, everything with the sound was done fairly well, nothing to stand out, but none of it really bad, except for that ONE in particular sound effect I despise. You'll know what I'm talking about when you hear it. If you don't it's the sound the gun makes at the end of the OP, they use that a LOT. I feel the sound just has no place in the show.

The Characters -

Very generic, bland characters. Granted this show is half the length of most shows, giving it very little time to spend on smaller things like characters. I can forgive this show for that as none of the characters where exactly bad, just pretty bland. I couldn't really find anyone I liked, but I couldn't find anyone I hated either.

My Enjoyment -

I was okay with the show overall. While nothing really grabbed my attention overall, I still enjoyed watching the show as it can be really cool at times and it uses guns in an anime. That is probably one of my favorite things to see in anime is guns, especially when done well, they were done really well. I did like it as a whole, but I did find the show to be lacking in a lot of areas for me to really enjoy it.