Hello everyone, heres a short review of a hidden gem I had the privilege to enjoy Beck The Mongolian Chop squad Information Type: TV Episodes: 26 Status: Finished Airing Aired: Oct 7, 2004 to Mar 31, 2005 Producers: Madhouse, Marvelous Entertainment, Starchild Records, FUNimation EntertainmentL, Asatsu DK, Kodansha Genres: Comedy, Drama, Music, Shounen, Slice of Life Duration: 25 min. per episode Review: Overview: In these recent years the SoL genre has lost most of its quality and diversity. Most shows nowadays are purely comedic, with over the top characters doing ridiculous things and falling into comical situations. Working! , Servant X Service , Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki kun , insert any harem you can think of are great examples of such anime. While yes, they are very entertaining.(not really :P) Most of them lack any realism and fail to be anything more. But in this sea of mediocre there are quite a few anime that are exceptional, anime that succeed to realistically depict the beauty and hardships of life. Beck is one such anime. Its a fine example of SoL done right and something truly worth making time for. Story: 14 year old Tanaka Yukio aka koyouki is an average middle schooler. Like many around his age he is unsure about his future and is struggling to find an ambition. One day he saves a peculiar dog named beck from some delinquents. The owner of this dog is the rebellious youth named Minami Ryuuske a 16 year old guitarist with a dream to make it big in the music industry. They soon become friends and Koyouki begins to develop a passion for music himself. He starts learning the guitar and his life changes forever. The plot is a fantastic coming of age tale containing the perfect blend of comedy, drama and romance. Nothing about the plot is too over the top. Its not some story containing ridiculously talented artists cruising through their path to fame. Its about a bunch of guys struggling to keep their band running, finding gigs and overcoming many hardships to finally become a full fledged band. Something really good about the plot is that it is very much about the music. Music is the central aspect of the plot rather than just a premise to get characters together. (e.g K-on!).The plot spends loads of time on the characters learning & practicing instruments, talking about bands, interpreting meanings of certain songs , writing their own songs, rehearsing and having Jam sessions. There are loads of drama and romance going on but the passion for music is truly the key aspect. The pacing of the plot however has some issues. Many of the aspects of the plot seemed to have been forcefully trimmed down. So many back stories remained vague & many problems were resolved in simpler ways then what was initially thought possible. The plot is not too complex, no twist and turns. Its simple but very gripping. 8/10 Characters: Beck has some great characters and some poorly developed ones too. This is due to its extremely large cast and limited episode count. This caused some of the characters to gradually fade away and others with just too little screen time to develop. The show primarily focuses on 6 characters The five members of Beck Koyouki , Ryuuske , Chiba tsunemi , Sakurai Yuji , Taira Yoshiyuki & Ryuuskes half sister Minami Maho. Koyouki is a timid, shy bloke who can be indecisive at times but he is passionate and loyal at the same time. Seeing him develop into a more confident & able fellow as the story goes on is a joyous experience. He is an extremely relatable character and one of my all time favs. Ryuuske is rebellious , he has his standards and doesnt put up with those who undermine it. He left his family due to some unexplained quarrel to pursue his dream in music. He lived most of his life in New York where he became friends with Eddy from the hit band dying breed. He came to Japan to make a band of his own. He has a great eye for people and is good at making friends. Maho has some of her brothers rebelliousness in her too. She is a bit of a tomboy taking on challenges head on. She can be stubborn and get easily pissed of at times but is a good person. Unlike her brother she knows about her responsibilities and doesnt try to run away from them. She knows of the burdens of her family and intends to live up to her parents expectations. However she does not shy away from opportunities to blow of and have some fun. The other three however dont get just as much personal screen time as them. Which is a shame really, since they are great characters in their own right. We do get to see them all the time and get to know them and how they are like. but it somewhat makes you want to see a bit more. Chiba and Yuji do get adequate time for a little great development but Taira gets none of that. Which is unexceptionable since he is supposed to be a main character. That being said the characters in beck are much more than blobs centered around archetypes. They are entities with a certain uniqueness to them. 8/10 Artwork & Animation: Inconsistent is the best word to describe becks artwork and animation. The artwork is great the character design and overall style is unique and sets it apart from the rest. But it gets messy at times, not much details are given to the background , the characters seem to have weird proportions at certain frames. Some scenes are superbly animated but a drop in quality can be seen many times in the anime. The inconsistency really hampers the full experience. 7/10 Music: For an anime about music something that is strikingly odd is the lack of music in the anime. There is virtually no background music in the anime. This is not exactly a bad thing and it goes with the style the studio wanted to create. The lack of music made of much easier to pay attention to and appreciate the sudden burst of music hears when beck performs or when koyouki listens/sings songs from dying breed. And these songs sung by beck and dying breed are really good~ (the English versions only , not the Engrish ones :P) Also the opening Hit it in the USA - beat crusaders is an awesome catchy upbeat song a personal favorite. 9/10 Jap Dub vs Eng Dub: I recommend to watch it with Japanese audio. The English dub is decent but the anime is multi lingual meaning characters switch between English and Japanese in the anime. So if you dont want to be annoyed hearing people transverse from English thats apparently Japanese to English thats apparently English :P.. Then Watch it in Jap. The English in the jap audio is awful but I would much rather put up with that rather than the alternative. For music however its a different story. The songs sound much better in the English dub than in the Japanese one. Where songs are sung in engRish with lots of grammatical mistakes. The English version not only corrects them but makes them sound better. So I suggest you get a dual audio version and switch to English when they begin to sing. xD Overall: Beck is an exceptional SoL with realistic, relatable characters , superb music and a compelling story. Though it has flaws that hold it down, its definitely worth your time. My personal Overall score: 8/10
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 21:10:26 +0000
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