Overview

I'm not usually a big fan of the companion battler genre of anime. While I can watch it, all too often they devolve quickly into 'Look what the power of friendship can do!' style drivel. Pokemon is a particular offender in this class of anime, as is Yu-Gi-Oh. That's not to say, though, that all companion battler anime series are bad. The subject of this preview, Kiba, is making a pretty decent effort at being good. Based on a collectible card game of the same name, the short idea is that a young trouble-maker, named Kiba, gets pulled from a semi-futuristic world into a fantasy world in which Shard Casters, what amount to magicians, fight as a country's military. Some of these Shard Casters have an additional ability, the power to summon Spirits, massive creatures of impressive power, to fight with them.

Review

Thus far, the series has done a pretty good job of keeping me guessing as to just what the hell is going on. Though the main storyline focuses on Kiba, it's an ensemble cast, and Kiba's best friend from the 'real' world gets sucked through too, but to a different country than the one that Kiba lands in. Admittedly, the series gets a bit disjointed because of this - I've held off on writing this preview until episode 12 because I honestly couldn't get a good enough handle on things until the last couple episodes. It should be interesting to see how the story progresses from here now that things seem to be into the mainline of the plot.

The characters are decently varied, though cliche overall. Kiba is the standard rebel without a cause, Roves is a bishounen pretty-boy looking for a good time, Dumas is the big guy with an ax to grind... Honestly, half the time I have to admit to not being particularly impressed with them. It's not that they're bad characters... There's just no real reason to go into depth on them because they're the same general archetypes that always show up in fantasy series. They play their roles well though, and the world itself is enough of a draw to cover for their... standardness. Perhaps most of all, while this is a companion battler series, the writers have been smart enough to not let the Spirits be the entire show, a problem that plagues others of this genre.

The music is pretty good, with some nice catchy themes. Thus far I've enjoyed what I've heard, and that's actually worth comment as I tend to filter out 'average' background music. It's the bad - or good, as in this case - stuff that I actually listen to. The Op theme is... eh, honestly not worth mentioning. As I mentioned in my review of Karin, there's been a number of REALLY good Op and End themes this season, so I'm probably being a little harsh on the more basic ones. Last but not least, the VA squad is competent. No glaring errors that I've noticed, but nothing particularly stellar, either. Oh well.

The animation is nicely consistent, but I'd have liked to see higher production values for the fight scenes. Take that with a grain of salt, as some of the later episodes, now that the story proper has gotten going, have been getting better. Still, the whole 'flash of light' style of fighting is too basic for a genre so dependent on good battles. The character design is probably the series' strongest point, as despite the cliche-ness of the character types, their appearances are nicely varied, and their outfits are remarkably elaborate.

Overall

The series does start off slow, folks, and it doesn't help that four episodes in it switches gears over to Kiba's friend, who's in another country entirely. Once they switch back to Kiba, though, things get going pretty well. They've done a pretty good job of setting up the three major countries introduced so far, too, and while I'm starting to wonder just what they're going to do with Noah - Kiba's friend - I've settled in for a good action series at the half-way point in the season. You will probably start to wonder when Kiba's going to catch a clue, and he does have a bad habit of mirroring the 'I don't give a damn' style of hero that's become popular lately in Japanese storytelling, but that habit seems to be fading now. I'd say give it a look if you're into fantasy series, as it's a good effort despite the generic characters.