Rating:
2.33
Approval:
62.6% (11 votes)
If you belong to the people who hate a popular anime like Evangelion, Azumanga Daioh, Planetes, Suzumiya Haruhi, Full Metal Alchemist or School Rumble, and think this is the worst series ever, then you need to watch a show which can truly show all the horrors that are possible in animated form.
And here's where Shining Tears X Wind comes into play. The staff working on it tries to make the worst series to hit Japanese TV ever, with an elaborate diligence, and most of the time they manage to do it. Almost surpassing such tv animation gems as GUN-dou Musashi, Hanoka, Legend of Duo, RUN=DIM, Platonic Chain or last year's worst series, as voted by 2ch users, Cabbage Love (Yoake Mae yori Ruri Iro na). A most impressive trait considering the competition in form of Shinkyoku Soukai Polyphonica and Kono Aozora ni Yakusoku wo, which aired at the same time.
Shining Tears X Wind is based on the game Shining Tears and its sequel Shining Wind and serves as a bridge between the two, money making at its best.
The whole thing looks like the staff working on it was doing something else the whole time and only threw together each episode when they coincidently met at the studio one day.
Character animation ranks from unbelievably poor to unbelievably bad. Aside from the frame rate which probably breaks all records with an average of 2, nobody did ever bother to do the inbetweens, nor did anybody clean-up. Scenes just include minimal key drawings moving, or rather stuttering, to the next minimal key drawings and all of them are just very poorly drawn, mangled faces and bodies, missing body parts, improbable postures, the whole range of stuff, you can do wrong when drawing, is there. Something leads me to think most of the credits were made up and they just saved themselves costs for ADs and other important staff.
Whoever made the storyboards was either totally drunk or they didn't bother with small stuff like that to begin with. Stuff dis- and reappears between scene changes, stuff just gets omitted for no reason, continuity, proportion and placing errors are everywhere, transitions between scenes don't exist at all. It's almost ridiculous to follow the show. In one scene you see a large scaled battle between two armies in the middle of nowhere, or you are supposed to see it because all you see is just some lines which are people, the hero rushes to help, or rather moves mechanically there, in the next few minutes you won't see anything of that battle, the only characters you will see are the main characters, nor will you hear any sounds at all, but suddenly there appeared a castle there.
Character designs are a horrible deformation of Tony Taka's original designs and details don't exist in this show to begin with, whether it's actual animation or just still frames and there is a big load of poor looking stills here. Effects, if used, can't be even called that. Backgrounds don't actually exist, it's mostly just one big splash of the same color, how nifty that they can let the whole show take place in the desert. There are also several instances of CG use, which is just basic models, without any detail, as if they just took them from a package of the used software.
Cabbage and Musashi were at least so bad animated that it made one laugh. Shining Tears turns even the manliest man amongst men into a crying and weeping baby, this is how bad it is.
The story could be actually interesting, could because here, as well, the script does not know any transition. Steady, logical and plausible development? Not needed! Just throw scene after scene at the viewer regardless whether it makes sense or not. A character can easily change from a total jackass, who only wanted to fight and did never pay attention to others, to the most considerate person, who is loved by everybody, within seconds. Just as well a character, who was the most perfect, can change into a total asshole within seconds. Everything for no reason at all. Include a character who develops a split personality to randomly change as the story flows and some other right out idiotical plot parts, place changes and random short scenes which don't serve any purpose at all and you ruined the little bit of potential there was.
Not to mention the dialogues, which are more or less random, contrived and cheesy. Did they just get a middle-schooler to write those? The fact that the voice actors read their lines as if they just sleep walked into the recording studio, and some of them even dub several characters, doesn't exactly add to the value and impression of the dialogues. If only it offers a good way to sell several drama and character cds since all of the voice actors are quite known, especially fangirl favourites Souichirou Hoshi and Ishida Akira (Kira and Athrun from Gundam SEED, Goku and Hakkai from Saiyuki).
A funny random fact concerning that. The series does have a big female cast. However, there is little to no female fanservice. Quite the contrary, there are several outstanding yaoi fanservice scenes including Souma x Zero and Souma x Kiriya. A ploy to lure the fangirls? Honi soit qui mal y pense.
Ah, right, there was also some music in the series and a few poor sound effects, maybe, here is where my mind gets clouded, watching an episode every few weeks in agony takes its toll. Opening and ending, both by Hoshi, were ok to listen to, but that's also the only memorable thing about the music.
One good thing about the series is that it ends. Very predictable, bar one thing, of course that one doesn't make much sense considering the development of the story till then, but it does actually close the story, only leaving some plot parts out.
If you are a masochist or would like to watch a actual bad series, instead of complaining about a popular and well rated series, then Shining Tears X Wind is for you. Everybody else, stay away.
