Blue Seed #1: The Nightmare Begins ADV 180 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 01/30/2000

Back To B Listings

Blue Seed has always been a bit of a vice for me. I remember well picking up a whole bunch of the VHS tapes at my local video store many years ago and being overjoyed that they were only $5 a tape. You see, back in the day $5 was an unheard of price for two episodes. I remember to own the entirety of Blue Seed subbed and dubbed one would have to pay over $600. Nowadays, if you look hard enough you can find it for less than $60. If I were more knowledgeable about useful things like mathematics I'd be able to tell you what kind of percent that was, but honestly I don't know. I'm gonna say it's a 1000% decrease in price. I don't think you people have any idea how sweet that is. Up until the time DVDs started to become more mainstream I had only seen about the first six episodes of this, and then two in the middle, and then two near the end. You want to know why? Because I was poor and stupid and I only bought the stuff that was on sale. I think it was worth it, that's sort of what you do with your hobby when you're fourteen and have very little money. Now that I've bought the series again, this time on a far superior format, I've managed to see almost half the series! You might not think that's an not an accomplishment, but with someone like me it most certainly is.

Even with shows I like it always takes me way longer than it should to finish them. You know how long it took me to finish Bubblegum Crisis 2040? More than a year. And that's practically my favorite show of all time. How long is it gonna take me to finish Blue Seed? I can't give you any exact numbers but it's taken me over five years to finish just the first half of the show. You can draw whatever conclusions you'd like from that. Basically what I'm trying to tell you is don't expect any new Blue Seed reviews any time soon. Please don't take my sloth to mean that this show isn't worth watching, because it certainly is. If you wanted me to explain why I liked it, I'd have a hard time, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with all the characters. At first, Momiji and crew might seem to be about the most stereotypical you've seen in anime this side of anything to do with a "harem". But after a few episodes it starts coming together. The guy who the main character keeps calling a pervert really IS a pervert, and every time she tries to slap him he just grabs her arm and pushes her away. Do you want to know why he can do that? Because she's a fifteen year old girl and if he couldn't it'd be stupid.

Honestly, I don't understand why more people haven't picked up on this concept. I've never been slapped by a fifteen year old girl before, but I'm pretty sure I could stop her from "sending me to the moon" if I wanted to. Even better, as useless as Momiji is, she actually manages to contribute once in awhile. And before you ask, I too thought that this was leading into some serious tentacle rape and I was worried beyond words about it. I guess us American audiences just lucked out that they decided to stop short before anything MORE than her panties were shown. I know audiences on the original broadcast were probably disappointed but I think it's for the best. Truth be told, I'm not too enamored with the amount of panty shots they portray in this series, but it could be a hell of a lot worse. Much like your friend the porn fiend, it's okay if they do it just as long as you never have to hear about it ever. I mean, it's still gross but at least they've kept it under their hat. Blue Seed, unlike another show I just reviewed, does a very good job of not making it look like fan-service is the only reason they're making the series.

You know what the reason is? I'm pretty sure it's for the super badass Kusanagi to go jumping from building to building and slicing up giant monsters. I think Kusanagi may've sort've started my love of sentai. It's not an exact match, but the similarities are there. Mostly the jumping and the giant monsters, those are both things I could totally get into. So, whenever I watch this show it basically boils down to me waiting for him to come kick some ass. Now, it doesn't happen EVERY time, but when it does it's remarkably sweet. It's impossible to not like a guy whose second line in the entire show is "Now, I'm very sorr about all this, but I have to kill you." In a way, Kusanagi was my first animated role model. That's obviously a lie. My first animated role model is any character that's provided a voice by the excellent work of Mike Reynolds. But Kusanagi's a close second, despite some of the scary things I may've seen in the past. The half-demon warrior is more than enough reason to watch this show. And if panties are your thing then there's some of them too. But I would suggest that if it IS your thing that you not tell anyone about it. Because that's just plain weird, and I don't think I want anyone thinking about such a good show in that kind of fashion. Jesus, now I just feel cheap...