Level E - Anime Review

Anime , Review    Comment   

Yes, this was supposed to be posted yesterday, but once again I have a legit reason as to why is wasn't. What's that? Well, I'm working on setting up another blog. No, I'm not replacing this one, this is still my primary blog. But I'm part of a cosplay group now (if three people qualifies as a group) so I'm putting up a blog for said group.

God knows I'll link to it here once it's ready, but I'm still doing all of the arranging right now and fighting with it. But here is this, a day late.

Level E Anime Review

Level E is about aliens. Specifically, Prince Baka. This is Men in Black anime-style; so there are aliens living and working right under our noses, but Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones aren't hunting them down and keeping them in line.

Well, Earth ends up placed under the power of the planet Dogura, and the aforementioned Prince Baka comes down to...keep an eye on things.

This was more of an episodic series, like a bunch of skits that happen to star some of the same people. It runs through a few different scenarios, with varying levels of comedy.

There are some baseball-loving aliens (that's right, it's such a great sport that aliens love it...but Arianna does not), some kids Baka decides need to become a watered-down version of the Power Rangers, another weird baseball incident, a mermaid, a princess who needs to not reproduce with someone from Earth but is determined to do so, and Prince Baka's own marriage that really best avoided. Definitely a crack series all-around.

The Characters: Level E

The cast was probably the strongest point in this anime. Even when the set-ups were lame and the arcs had nothing else going for them, the characters still maintained their levels of awesome.

For one you have Baka, who is just a giant prankster. Envision a complete genius with money and access to basically whatever they want, and then make them someone who just likes to play extravagant, overdone jokes on other people.

That's Baka, right there. (And book geek that I am, I just thought of Artemis Fowl playing a prank and it did not work out in the slightest). Then there's Baka's staff his bodyguards.

The primary bodyguard is Kraft, who, honestly, hates the shit out of Prince Baka. You can't really blame him.

For all the pranks Baka plays, a good chunk of them have been on his poor head bodyguard said bodyguard can't exactly do anything about it, because well...it's a prince.

You can't just beat the shit out of him. Oh. Except when you can: Great scene. It kind of made Kraft one of my favorite characters. A lot of scenes turned him into my favorite character.

Other than that, it was the watered-down Power Rangers. They weren't half-bad, but I was too distracted by constantly thinking “You are not the Power Rangers!” to really like them much.

Anyway, the characters in this series were very well-done. Points to Level E's cast.

The Trolling: Level E

It would have been more accurate of me to say “Level E is about a troll”. Look, we have this prince...who is a troll.

And he is a damned Epic Troll. He takes it to a whole new level. He will troll you and you will like it. And it vaguely amuses me that a genius troll happens to be named “Idiot”.

So what this anime fan would like to see, right now, is a Troll-Off between Baka of Level E and Izaya Orihara of Durarara!!. That would just make my life. I want to see who would win.

Conclusion?

Well. I'm not going to say it was a terrible series. But it also wasn't wonderful by any means. It was comedy, through and through, sure, meaning I could totally accept it as crack.

The problem is, the comedy was entirely too much of a mixed bag. It went between laugh out loud funny, slight 'heh' inducing, and 'ehhhh, you tried'. It did that a lot.

I honestly preferred the more serious pieces than the funny ones when the funny ones were falling flat. I don't think that's supposed to be the case with a comedy series.

At least I hope not, because that would be entirely missing the point of the comedy genre, right? Sure, I'd recommend watching it, but... I will take this: Over this:

Every day of my life. (Arianna would like to note that she was one of the people who busted a gut laughing last year when she saw the TV claiming that they would be showing “All new episodes of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” and it was literally the exact same thing she watched in first grade).

My rating: 6/10

It was a quality series, yeah. But it had so many issues with the comedy, I know a few people who dropped it because it was so lacking in that area.

Level E
Episodes	13
Genre	Comedy, Sci-Fi, Shonen
Aired	January 11, 2011 to April 5, 2011
Directed by	Toshiyuki Kato
Producers	Studio Pierrot, David Production
Opening Theme	Cold Finger Girl by Chiaki Kuryama
Closing Theme	Yume ~Mugen no Kanata~ by Vivid