English Dub Review: The Reflection “Ceremony”

You know, if nobody told me Stan Lee created this show, I still would have figured it out.

Spoilers Below

Courtesy: Funimation

Three years ago, a mysterious event occurred. A wave of color spread across the sky, covering the planet in its energies. The event was called The Reflection, and while governments played it off as a terrorist attack, it seemed to be much more. In its wake, several people were mutated, being granted bizarre powers. It felt as if they were chosen. Maybe they were. Nobody knows anything about the event: why it happened, what it was, or why it gave people powers. It is now three years since, and around the world, people are observing their own ceremonies commemorating the Reflection. In Japan, they set lanterns out on the river to float away. In New York, they gather in Times Square for a big show. This year, however, they get a bit more of a show than they were expecting.

Courtesy: Funimation

You weren’t expecting people to get powers and not have some of them turn evil, were you? Of course not. Meet Dead Wing and Fearsome Frog. They’re a couple dudes who are up to no good and have started making trouble in the neighborhood. Fortunately, a righteous dude in a metal battle suit is here to show them the door. As their epic battle crashes through buildings and shatters the windows of skyscrapers, they find themselves bound into the Times Square celebration. Strangely, an old 80’s pop song comes on all the screens in the square: “Sky Show”. This, coupled with the cheers of the screaming crowd gives him all the power he needs to take down the baddies. Even as this goes on, Eleanor Evans is interested in a different story. She runs into a back alley and begins taking shots of a red-suited hero and a villain with a liquid body. She gets ambushed by a mysterious man with purple tendrils. He wraps her up and begins squeezing her until she screams. With a green glow, she blinks away from him, but the attack was enough to get what he wants. Her screams distract the red man, and his watery opponent stabs him. With a strange, red light, our hero copies his foe’s power, turning his water blades back on him. When the tentacled man attacks him, he copies that, too. With all the baddies out of the way, the only question left is the identities of these two heroes. Well, the first calls himself I-Guy but says he can’t stick around. He going to live with his uncle and his auntie in Bel Air-er… Los Angeles. But our red hero has been seen before. The media calls him X-On, and he wants to know what Eleanor is doing following him.

So, the first thing I see when this anime comes across my radar is that it was created by Stan Lee. The Generalissimo has been enamored with Japanese media form for a while. He’s been involved with a manga project before, Mechanical Boy: Ultimo, and that ran for about six years. Now, he’s developed this comic book-inspired bonanza. It has all the hallmarks of Stan Lee’s thought process. It almost feels like I’m watching “X-Men: The Anime”. No, the characters are completely new, and they seem to have some depth to them, but they give off all the Lee/Ditko vibes. I mean, look at the names of these characters: Dead Wing, Fearful Frog, Flaming Fury, Steel Ruler. If that doesn’t scream 70’s comics, I don’t know what does. So, is this a good thing, or a bad thing? I feel like it is more on the good side of the equation. The cheese of the characters is mitigated by the real-world truthiness of how people react. This is written as if it happened today, and is conscious of how the media approaches things. A field reporter for a television network has normal issues with her broadcast, and as the fight breaks out, her anchors beg her to leave. Later, pundits argue over the Reflection and the ethical issues of its aftermath. It even goes into civil rights and political correctness when referring to those affected. Though this was handled often in the X-Men comics, they way they touch on it here feels real.

Courtesy: Funimation

Unlike the art and animation. This is both a high point and a low point. The art style is thoroughly graphic and looks like it is torn straight from the pages of a comic book. At its best, this gives it a shocking punch and a clarity of action. At its worst, however, it is muddied, simplistic, and just plain ugly. Also, because the style is so graphic, it makes it appear as if the whole thing was animated using Adobe Flash. In those scenes where they put the effort in, it’s beautiful, smooth, and loaded with personality. When they didn’t care so much, it barely moves at all. This gets a bit disjointed when you see Eleanor teleport, as she glows (really, just gains a green line around her outline), then appears elsewhere in the next frame. It looks like an animation error. I get it, it’s supposed to look like that, but when you put it up next to the other animation errors, it doesn’t look like it was intentional. It looks like the video skipped. Voice acting… Hmm… I would like to say good things about the voice acting job here. I just couldn’t really hear anything. The audio is so muddy that I couldn’t make out most of what was being said, and I was wearing pretty good headphones, at max volume. This wasn’t the fault of the actors. In fact, when Stan Lee came on for the teaser portion at the end, he was clear as crystal. This suggests that the muddiness came from filters used to make the characters sound like they were in suits or in a real environment.

Do I like this show? I can. I put it that way because it seems to have good storytelling potential, and the characters are interesting. I can put up with the art style for a good story. It isn’t horrible, it’s just inconsistent. If they fix that muddy audio and spend less time staring at empty space in silence, they could have a fan in me. So, while it looks like a negative review above, I would advise you to give this show a shot, and hopefully, it will fix its issues. Hopefully. Until then, I give this episode seven doses of gamma radiation out of ten. Excelsior!

SCORE
7.0/10