With Shougo now bonded, the ante has been upped.
What They Say:
Now, in the modern age, the creator of the universe, Majin, has revived suddenly. At the same time, visitors from the darkness have descended to Earth. As danger nears the Earth, three men pursue a young boy. “Is he a match? Could he really be humanity’s last hope?”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Majin Bone upped the ante a bit recently with the new villainous characters its introduced while also making Shougo a bit more interesting now that he’s managed to strike a contract and deal with the power that’s inside him. That’s lead him to being fairly powerful and a definitely useful force against what they’re fighting against in order to save the world. But his taking on the defense of the Dragon Bone also has others like Luke feeling like they’ve dropped the ball a bit as they couldn’t do the protecting that they were signed on to do. It’s kind of understandable in a basic way, but it also paints Luke in particular in a way that had him focused more on being the savior and protector as opposed to simply doing the job no matter who ends up getting it done.
This kind of tension does bleed into the group when together, though some are kind of oblivious to it until it rears itself more because they don’t suffer from the same issue. The tension in the group is fairly standard when it comes to plot points and it’s no surprise to see it here. But it lacks a resonance since we’ve had so little material overall to really get aligned and in tune with the characters beyond their very superficial personalities. At times, it almost feels like the just introduced villains have more personality and interesting moments than the good guys. Which we once again see here as one of their meetings brings them into contact with Lord Klude, one of those from up on high that’s orchestrating things and has stopped by to check out what’s going on now that the Dragon Bone has synced up with a human.
Naturally, his arrival gets the bad guys moving again a bit more and it leads to a new combat situation as they strike at the good guys and Luke throws them all into the virtual world to fight. That has Shougo ready to take it up a few notches and really go at it, which works nicely since there’s a good bit of intensity to be had across it as the fight gets underway. But there are a few twists that get thrown into it as amid the heat of battle, there’s a kind of pause between things that throws both sides of balance. With someone being able to essentially stop time during the fight, that can change the nature of things in a big way. And that gets Shougo really keyed up for the fight, which has him now throwing his all into it in an even bigger way.
In Summary:
Majin Bone has fully entered the spinning its wheels territory for me. I had figured that I’d run up through the end of the season, but a quiet day has me taking in one more just to see if it was changing course at all. While it is slowly making a few adjustments, it’s doing things that simply are too drawn out, uninteresting and poorly executed. I had a lot of hope for the series early on based on its animation quality, but it ended up being too basic and without a strong enough narrative to work or to overcome the 3DCG material. It’s a standard concept with some solid people behind it, but it wasn’t able to rise above its origins.
Grade: C-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
