Apperantly quite hyped up in Japan, this series flew under my radar for quite a while till I was curious enough to google the title after all seeing it pop up quite often. To my surprise this show had Shinji Aramaki on the staff list as both director and mecha-designer. Any anime fan who hasn`t been around say the 80`s mainly would know Aramaki from his most recent work as a director namely from the CG Appleseed movies Appleseed and Appleseed EX Machina. His 80`s work involve the excellent Metal Skin Panic : Madox 01 and the fiasco that was Megazone 23#3 as such Aramaki is mostly popular not for his directing work but mostly so for his mechanical designs which are top-notch and even if you don`t recoqnise his name you`ve probably seen his handywork in Bubble Gum Crisis (2033) Mospeada, Megazone 23 and hell, even M.A.S.K that cheesy 80`s show with the themesong that gets stuck in your head for days on end !
The storyline is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the few remaining cities are under constant threat of mechanised terrorist attacks that utilise remnants from the war the originally called “Bug mecha” yep these quad-legged armored monstrosities look like they came straight out of Ghost in the shell. PMC`s (Private Military Corporation) works to protect cities from these terrorists using Aramaki trade-mark mechanised motorcycles called Manouver Blades which are the show`s center of attention. They can freely change from a speedy motorcycle to a humanoid robot form that resemble those found in the original Megazone 23 and don’t even think about comparing these babies to Ridebacks (from the anime title:Rideback) as these things are specialised for combat bristling with weapons like missiles,chainsaws and assault rifles.
Having said the most redeeming thing about Viper’s Creed let me get down dirty with the things I didn`t like after watching the initial two episodes. This show doesn’t pretend to have any sort of storyline or bothers to show characters with strong emotion or any sort of other attribute other than being totally flat and uninteresting.
The basic premise regarding the state of the world and why the Manovuer Blades piloted by the PMC’s mercenaries is explained with a screentime of approximentally one minute during both episodes and the character stereotypes and flatness of them almost have no bounds.
Where there’s action there’s plenty of GITS styled spidertanks to shoot hot lead at but I’m affraid that might not be enough to keep this show floating. The voice acting is uninspiring and doesn’t persuade, but how can they with such stereotypically boring chara’s to play out.
The CGI is passable for the most part and additionally the artwork presented troughout the first two episodes of the cityscape and such are bland, desolate,boring,repetitive and too sterile looking A trait shared by alot of anime TV shows that showed up after the start of the digital era.
It`s just silly seeing a shot of the semi-sunken city with the few buildings that are in sight having no texturing what so ever and appear to be completly flat and the highway that seemingly go nowhere are in pristine quality with the few mostly un-textured buildings you do see look like deserted dumps.
I will keep this on my watch list . . for now; I’m not expecting much from Viper’s Creed and unless it gets any better it will remain one of those shows you’ll only bother watching if your bored and need to see stuff being blown up. Even then, you’d be better off with Gundam 00 which does it all in better animation,art and style.
This post is tagged megazone, shinji aramaki, viper's creed