Ruin Explorers ADV 120 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 07/11/2000

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I try to be as fair as I can watching this stuff, but sometimes it just gets plain hard. I'm not particularly a fan of fantasy anime, I don't really like shows that have peppy upbeat songs about "Magical Dreams" and the bird that flies north for the winter, or whatever else and I especially don't enjoy shows that employ that most detestable of detestable practices, the catgirl. No matter how well done the show might be, those are all pretty big detractors from my enjoyment of it in general, put them all together and I'd probably have a better time trying to urge my brain out of my head via a ball peen hammer.   So while I'm sure that Ruin Explorers is a perfectly managable show in its own right it's definetely not the thing for me right from the get go, add in that it's just about two hours long and you've pretty much got a recipe for disaster. I really don't see the point of having characters that cast magical spells when you could make a show about people with guns, and giant robots. These people could possibly be pirates or ninjas too, and you'd find no complain from me. On that matter, why do dubs always have that inane desire to make the words to magic spells rhyme? Not only that, but it's like there's a law that says it has to be the most forced rhyme ever.

You know, another thing that really pisses me off is the inclination of shows like this to think that saying a girl seems like a man is pretty funny. We've seen in before in fantasy anime and it doesn't design to hide itself here either. The purple haired Ihrie is called boyish at least two times in this show when she's got a rack twice the size of many of her real life conterparts. Maybe a thousand years ago in Japan when people were going on adventures like this and killing dragons and whatnot this kind of thing was common place, so it's possible that there's a precedent in the history books. But I doubt it. Other stereotypes found in this show would be the slutty chick who wears next to nothing and has a laugh that's almost exactly like a certain other busty magican that wears a cape. Don't get me wrong, capes are awesome, but all of the jokes in this just seem like they're recycled from Slayers. Moving right along we're introduced to the wiseass braggart swordsman who's not very smart but eventually does end up proving that he's not all talk. Sound familiar? I'd hope not, because if it did you're probably too much of an anime fan for your own good and I don't want you to read this anymore.

At least the character of Miguel is a loveable braggart, unlike the unpleasant Galuf, who I believe is a clandestine slant by the animators against the Middle East. It's possible that I'm reading too much into this, but I doubt it. You know what's even better? Even though this guy is a dirty, money grubbing bastard who betrays them 2+ times the little cadre of adventurers just gladly keeps letting him come along on their various "quests". That just seems like bad business to me, but I guess I'm not a cat girl or an overly endowed "boy-woman" so I wouldn't really know about proper protocol. And blah blah blah, they run into a "deposed prince" who was betrayed by a Cardinal and I'm jusst like "What the fuck? Are we in the Three Musketeers now?" While not exactly accurate, because there was no prince and the evil guy didn't have super magical powers he got from a demon I think the point is still relatively valid. There IS a Cardinal after all, and how many of those do you see hanging around? Not many, the answer is.

So everyone's on this mad dash to find the (Real) Ultimate Power and it all goes like one of those really boring video games Bare is always playing. If someone had told them that you only need to visit the site that ninety percent of the internet already knows about it probably would've saved them a whole lot of time. Nevermind that. I'm telling you, if being deposed meant I got two crazy hot girls to make me all sorts of pot roasts and what have you, I certainly wouldn't mind losing the entire peasant population of my kingdom to an insane priest. I mean, worse things have happened. You know, I did actually date a chick who made me pot roast on two seperate ocassions. Of course, this was right before she tied me to the bed with silk scarves and tried to jam an ice pick through my chest. The pot roast was pretty good though.