Blue Seed

Director
Jun Kamiya
Production
NAS, TV Tokyo
Country of origin
Japan
Format
Series
Running time
26 episodes
Year
1994

Blue Seed

By Jonathan Chapman
9th Aug 04

Did you know that plants can talk? That they have super powers and somehow integrate into human beings? Yeah me neither, and besides the dilemma this would pose to vegetarians, it doesn't interest me. Unfortunately I was tricked by some reviews and a box cover into buying the box set. While the series wasn't unwatchable, it wasn't really enjoyable either. The last thing anime needs is another Sailor Moon wannabe, but I digress. Anyway on with the review.

Before we get started lets go over some background. Apparently, like in most anime, this show revolves around ancient Japanese demons that were subdued at some time in the past by royalty. The notion of gatekeepers to the supernatural reminds me of Vampire Princess Miyu, while other aspects of this remind me of Inuyasha. I don't exactly condone this reiteration of past storylines, but it does make for interesting plots. Now for the characters of this anime.

Momji is your run-of-the-mill school girl. She doesn't know that her destiny is to be a sacrifice to the plant monsters (the Aragami), as the decendant of a Kushinada Dynasty princess. Momji has special blood you see, blood that puts plant monsters to sleep. This is apparently the reason her ancestors were royalty.

Momji reminds me of off of Inuyasha's Kagome (I mean they have the same jobs in their perspective shows - both can detect other beings with supernatural power and determine their weakness). Hmm, supernatural seeds that give their bearers demonic powers? Oh, that's right.. I already mentioned how this anime parallels Inuyasha. You can't really say it borrowed from Inuyasha, since Blue Seed came out six years before. They had different directors as well, which is probably why Inuyasha was largely popular instead of the let-down this series was.

Oh, and speaking of character likenesses, we need our token bad guy with a conscience. Mamoru Kusanagi is a plant-person who tries to kill Momji, then decides he's desperatly in love with her after he sees her underwear (I'm not making this stuff up). At the same time, Momji somehow gets a blue seed (the heart of a plant monster), which allows her to detect other Aragami. Did I just not watch that part throughly enough? Perhaps.. I did fall asleep through a few episodes. That's just how thrilling it was to take part in witnessing such fine anime.

But enough bashing Momji and Mamoru for their shallowness. There's plenty of other characters that suffer the same malady, such as a ditzy blond that reminds me of Milly Thompson from Trigun, and a nerd working for the military that reminds me of Yang Newman from Macross Plus. This show suffers from same syndrome that a lot of quickly-produced shows do: too many half-thought ideas and not enough effort to produce them as they should be produced.

That seems to be unifying element of the anime. It does so many things that aren't original and aren't well presented that it's hard to pick any one thing in particular. We have a shallow girl character with a rich ancestry (that isn't explored). This is juxtapose to Kagome, who's feelings are well-explored. We have an organization that suddenly appears to combat supernatural forces, unlike the Hellsing organization from the show Hellsing. We have a static "bad boy" hero, unlike memorable characters such as D from Vampire Hunter D or Inuyasha.

To make things worse, the anime isn't quite up to par with what we see today. Part of this is that the production date was 1994. Who's to say this anime didn't break ground on story telling, but this doesn't make it lack of luster acceptable. When compared to dated anime such as "Apple Seed", this just isn't worth the DVD it was printed on. The graphics are mediocre, the story is a mis-mash of other anime, and the music is non-memorable at best.

Rent it, borrow it, but do not buy it.

5/10

-- Jonathan Chapman 9th Aug 04

Blue Seed Images