Skadi

Most of the time when I view an OVA series I often feel the show was too short and could have used more episodes. In the case of BALDR FORCE EXE, I couldn’t wait for it to be over. Things start out pretty well as we are introduced to a future world where a virtual reality internet is a huge part of society. This network is called WIRED, and people can do about everything you can think of in this online world. The world is populated by hackers and network terrorists and the corporations and police forces that try to stop them.The world gives the show a perfect opportunity to have robot battles because anime loves itself some Mecha's. The hackers, terrorists, and police do battles online in virtual reality mecha suits but the catch is if you are killed in the online world, apparently this causes your brain to explode into a bloody mess in the real world. Fans of exploding heads are sure to be thrilled! Overall it’s a fairly interesting premise for a plot but the show manages to fall flat on its face pretty early. It makes the mistakes of other short series by trying to have too much going on. There are too many subplots involving other secondary characters to be fair with any of them. While it does a good job with the main story, which is the most important after all, it would have been better to have just stuck with the basics. The motivation of the main character in the beginning is, to put it bluntly, stupid. Toru is a hacker who after being arrested by the police is giving the option of jail or joining them. But apparently he would rather go to prison because his only reason for accepting is to get revenge on the person with the police who killed his friend. While on the surface this would seem like it’s not such a bad reason, considering they were breaking the law and also trying to kill the police in return, is it really that fair to expect your might get yourself killed? Considering how many other people Toru kills himself over the course of the series, if those peoples friends took things the same way the world would be filled of nothing but revenge hungry sociopaths. My main source of irritation with this series is the characters. Toru was an incredibly irritating character and I disliked him a lot. I found him to be an egotistic nut job that is singularly focused on killing the person responsible for his friend’s death. Having to suffer him made this anime largely a pain in the ass to watch. Unfortunately there aren’t any supporting characters to redeem the series either. They are for the most part two dimensional and boring. Ayane was the only character I felt any empathy towards and she was the most cruelly treated. The reason for me watching this show in the first place was the music of Kotoko and Mami Kawada. They both deliver a couple very good songs which make this the one bright spot of the series. The artwork is really not that good when you consider how recently this was made. The CG effects are very drab and ordinary looking. Generally I am not a fan of CG animation and this certainly won’t change my view. A lot of the backgrounds though are very nicely done, but this really felt like a show much older than it is. I didn’t get much in the way of enjoyment from this anime. It was a painful 2hrs to finish and thus I find it difficult to recommend to anyone. I suppose if you really love CG or Mechs and must see every title out there that has those themes you could check this out. Overall it’s just very mediocre.

Livira

BALDR FORCE EXE Resolution is one of the those fantastic OVA series that is severely overlooked by the vast amount of people who watch anime. It has wonderful art, a decent storyline, and good characters. STORY: The series is about a man, Tooru, who has lost everything (won't spoil ;p) and joins up with a kind of team, or company, called FLAK. The series is set in a would-be Japan, where the "wired world" is part of everyday life. People are able to literally plug themselves into certain computers and spend time in this new cyber world. It is quite a difficult concept for the writers ofthis OVA to get across well in such a small amount of time, but they do it brilliantly. ART: Nothing to complain about here: the characters are drawn very well, the backgrounds are fantastic, and the Mecha and Wired World, which are usually done by CG, are fantastic. SOUND: The music was absolutely incredible. KOTOKO sings the opening theme and the lyrics fit so well with the series, and Mami Kawada sings the ending, which is beautiful but sad at the same time. Luckily for me, these two are actually my favourite singers. CHARACTER: The characters in the OVA could have done with a lot more development, excluding Tooru, but since the series was so short character development was kind of out of the question. However, each character is still able to be unique. ENJOYMENT: Except for the events of episode 2, I really enjoyed watching this series, as it was such an experience to watch. For an OVA, it went far deeper than I would have imagined and OVA could. OVERALL: I was so close to giving BALDR FORCE EXE Resolution a 10/10, but episode 2 really put me off - I thought it was unneeded. However, I reccommend this to everybody ^^