Read or Die the TV
Directed by: Koji Masunari
Produced by: JC Staff
There’s something horribly
unfamiliar about Read or Die the TV.
Anyone who isn’t a hardcore Read or Die
fanboy find themselves asking, who is this Nenene? Why should we care about
her? And most of all, where’s Yomiko!?!
Sadly the series answers our questions at a snail’s pace, leading to
boring filler episodes at the front of the series. Forgetting the fact that Yomiko Readman isn’t
present for a minute, let’s take a look at the new characters, first of all
Sumiregawa Nenene: she’s a young headstrong Japanese author and friend of
Yomiko Readman; she became famous at an early age and for a time achieved a
sort of aidoru status in
The story in Read or Die the TV is certainly more
developed than Read or Die bringing
with it a better sense of scale as well as some nasty problems the first major
problem is pacing, 26 is a lot more than 3 and in order to fill 13 hours of
series JC Staff have had to add some filler episodes some welcome, some not so
welcome. The first quarter of the series
is terribly slow, with the exception of the sisters infiltration of a vampire’s
castle (yes you read that right) not a lot happens. Instead we re given time to get to know the
new characters, Maggie, Michelle and Anita (the three sisters) each of them
possess unique paper wizardry and distinct personalities. Maggie, is tall and
shy and specialises in making animals out of paper, Michelle, is optimistic and
flighty and uses her paper like a bow and arrow and Anita, she’s young and
obnoxious and very strong she uses her paper like knives and is fairly gung ho
when fighting. It’s
fun to watch the sisters work together and communicate and they play as comic
relief in many instances. We also meet
Nenene; she’s very headstrong but is lonesome and depressed since Yomiko
left. You’ll be happy to hear that both
Yomiko and Nancy (Ms. Deep) make a return Yomiko is a lot less clumsy in the
series but she still possesses a nice air of innocence about her while Nancy is
not as ruthless as before and acts like a child (due to an accident sustained
in the OVA.)
The animation and designs
are up to the same high standard set by the OVA. The backgrounds are rendered in CG and may be
familiar to those of you who watched the OVA, characters designs are clean and
crisp and are capable of evoking smiles at all times, everything looks
right. Animation wise the TV series
suffers from some slight frame rate problems this is to be expected however and
doesn’t break up the Hong Kong-centric action sequences in any way (see for
example the first episode, when Anita saves Nenene at the book signing. John Who?)
Many of the OVA cast return
for Read or Die the TV including the
fantastic Rieko Miura who plays Yomiko with the same passion as in the
OVA. Also worth a mention is
Chiwa Saito who plays Anita she gives a stellar performance and gets quite
emotional in some scenes, very passionate and very good. Musically the TV series still possesses all
the spy fiction class of the original it also features some great ending songs
(one of which is performed by Ms. Miura) Aurally Read or Die the TV is flawless.
To summarise, although the
earlier episodes can be viewed as filler the majority of the series is killer
stuff. Featuring some of the best action
sequences I’ve ever seen in an anime, as well as some fantastic voice acting,
sound effects and dialogue. It all plays
out like a very good Radio Play the ending could’ve done with some extra
sadness (watch and learn) but that’s about the TV series only fault, highly recommended.
Eight out of Ten