What, an anime review?  On this blog?  It’s more likely than you think.  Episode 12 was finally subbed and put on the Internet, after basically a three month drought.  The ending, like the rest of the series, was decent.  Let’s take a look at what makes this series tick

Crystal Blaze follows the story of Sara, a young woman who’s being pursued by an evil organization.  This is just the beginning of the cliches folks, I hope your prepared.  What’s the twist, then?  She’s a biological superweapon capable of localized devastation and nearly invulnerable to attack.  Despite that, she’s still just a perfectly nice girl that wants to live her life.  She ends up in the protection of a detective agency, and naturally the two groups start trying to outmaneuver each other.  In the process, they discover a huge coverup and factory to produce these weapons, including an even more powerful weapon.

Like Sara, the rest of the cast is pretty much a bunch of stock characters.  Shu is the main protagonist of the story, he’s a ladies man who’s quite aloof and only concerned about conducting his business.  Akira, his brother, is the nice guy that does most of the footwork for the agency.  Manami is a high energy tomboy who will honestly grate on your nerves a bit in just a few episodes.  Ayaka is the exact opposite, she’s very quiet and withdrawn.  Porilynn is Shu’s cross-dressing boss who has his thumb on the pulse of the town though an immense security camera network.  And finally there’s Sensei and Monica, the lecherous doctor and his assistant.

So with all these cliches, this series must be absolutely horrible, right?  Well, not quite.  The story follows a fairly predictable course of events, but there’s little moments of surprise that managed to make me rewind and look at th scene again.  All of the characters grow to a decent degree by the end of the series, except for Manami, who is eternally annoying as sin.  The balance of action and story filler is pretty decent, I never felt like the series was dragging, nor running too fast, which is pretty good for a 12 episode series.  And, well, it’s just entertaining, and sometimes that’s what matters.

The bottom line, is Crystal Blaze is just decent; you can tell they were trying to do something here but just fell short.  It’s definitely not a series that breaks new ground, but it does have little glimmers of greatness.  The art style feels a little awkward at first, but it grows on you.  As the series progresses, it naturally gets darker to match the overall tone of the story.  And as I mentioned before, I waited three months for the conclusion.  So if you’ve got the time, give it a chance.

Series score: 7/10 Flying Cars

Objectionable content – Violence, of course.  Sara and her bretheren both turn into glass and kill people by the same means, which might be disturbing to younger viewers.  The doctor and his assistant’s antics at the beginning of the series are also inappropriate for the youngsters.  14+.

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