rhianna66 - 2014-07-01 07:28:20

This review is a part of the Random Button Review Project. To learn more about the project or participate, click here.

I'll let you know right now that if it weren't for the extremely sexy Something Random button on the trending page of hummingbird, then I wouldn't have spent 45 minutes of my time on this. I would have instead chosen to do something better with my time, like actually getting some shit off my Plan to Watch list that just keeps growing larger. But, nope. I decided instead to watch this. I sometimes wonder what's wrong with me, you know? But either way, I'm writing this review. Welcome to Early Reins, an obscure OVA from 2003 that nobody really bothered to watch.

I should probably start by explaining what this thing's about. Basically, there's a train that's going somewhere for some reason and there's bandits who want to get on the train and steal things. There are armed, trained guards on this train, but they are of course taken down by these bandits almost immediately. On this same train there is a group of young women who decide that because a bunch of armed guards can't stop bandits, they somehow can. And, well, that's kind of it. Along the way we run into several different groups of bandits, and the action never seems to stop. It's entertaining, to say the least. Or the most. The show doesn't do anything too special, other than having a couple of really out of place plot twists at the end. It's not very well-written, but it at least kept me watching for 45 minutes. That's all it really needed to do, anyway.

The animation for this thing is pretty flawed all around. I'm not going to lie. The 2D animation is only decent, and the 3D animation that they like to use ever so frequently is just plain nasty. You'll see the outside of the train in CG, and then proceed to show you the inside in standard 2D animation, and the switch is really jarring. It's like eating a bowl of ice cream right after you just had an extremely hot bowl of chicken noodle soup. Which, if you've ever tried it, does not feel good. Not at all. The character designs, while generic, make it very easy for the viewer to differentiate between the different characters, which is absolutely necessary when you only have 45 minutes to tell your story anyway. Backgrounds are "meh." They serve their purpose, but only just barely.

Sound here was... interesting. I actually thought the soundtrack was good enough, and very fitting. It contains tracks that one would normally hear in an old american western show, which makes sense considering the content of this OVA. Sound effects were fine as well, and the japanese voice acting was decent enough.

I know what you're thinking. "Well, what did good ol' Burst mean when he said 'Interesting'?" My one and only answer to that question is the dub. The dub for this OVA is so absolutely fucking horrible that I would actually recommend it over the sub. That's right; this dub reaches the "so-bad-it's-good" tier that few other dubs have ever managed to drop to (I'm looking at you, Garzey's Wing.) The characters use these southern american accents that sound part-retarded, part-fake, and part-stupid all at the same time. But not all the characters use these, of course. There are plenty of characters that speak without it. And to be honest, I'd rather they sound like a retarded donkey than a stiff, bored woman who has nothing better to do with her life. I nearly put together a dub highlights, it was so bad. I found myself laughing ridiculously hard out loud many a time during the course of the anime, which, although distracting from the story, made it infinitely more enjoyable.

I kind of got lazy whilst writing this wonderful review. See, I wrote the first half the day I watched the show, and then saved the rest of the review for later because I got tired of writing. Seeing that I can't actually remember the characters is probably a pretty good sign that there isn't much to them. I think there was some badass chick helping a bunch of helpless ladies fight off endless hordes of badguys who all went down with absolutely no effort. That's all I really remember about them. I don't know if this show necessarily needs good characters anyway, but I can't say it's not a bad thing that I can't even remember what they looked like.

I did enjoy this anime, but I don't really think it's because it was good. I would say it's more because it was completely mindless garbage, making it extremely fun to watch at the very least. I would almost never recommend it, but at least it wasn't a complete waste of time.

Anyway, this has been Burst. Sayonara, bitches