*** Adult Content *** (how else can you discuss this show?)Nearly nonsensical concept I find hard to grasp. More succinctly put, hard to accept. Ereinbar Set, Pandora mode, Stigmata, Limiters, Freezing Mode, Novas, what kind of Sugar Pops has these Japanese blokes had for breakfast? And how come she has such an outlandish name? Satellizer el Bridget? Ah, but despite what the DVD says, it's actually Satellizer L. Bridget. Pray tell, what does the L stand for?Okay, so I've just started watching ep. 05 and am hardly qualified to give an expert opinion. I got involved with this after scouting the Internet searching for a charming figurine to go with my DVD collection, but there wasn't anything from the likes of the shows I collect, while the mysterious Satellizer el Bridget popped up everywhere I looked. Unfortunately the prices are astronomical as I have to go through a third party, an importer, and one could buy a good-quality second-hand car for the price of one of these cute figurines.Instead, when researching this FREEZING anime, I got hooked on the show itself. I downloaded episodes, but could not get all, and they were heavily censored anyway. Decided that it would look spectacular on my big screen. The rest is history. I am now watching my first season on DVD with that plain UK set*, not the one with the Blu-Ray combo and booklet. *I was pleasantly surprised by the textless opening and closing themes. Great little junior music videos! Neat extras!The thing is dazzling, and I love the theme song, Color, by MARIA, and the end theme, hell, two difficult names that escape me now, but apparently it translates to To Protect You. (I googled the pretty 17-year-old singer this morning. Aika Kobayashi, that's it). The OVA, the fan service bits, are kinda weird, some could hardly ever fit in with the rest of the story, but I keep having this running gag in the back of my mind: Imagine if MELROSE PLACE had fan service!Satellizer was clearly molested as a child, and has developed acute aphephobia (along with a cute everything else), a fear of being touched. She is genetically enhanced by "stigmata" to enable her to combat Nova, and is trained at West Genetics, where she has been transferred after an incident that caused her to be suspended for a year at East Genetics - the permanent injury of her Limiter. Here at West Genetics she hospitalized another student for touching her, and earned herself the moniker "The Untouchable Queen". She has yet to find herself a new Limiter, i.e. male teammate assisting her in battle. This is where Kazuya Aoi comes in...Like I said, it's dazzling. While it fails to make proper sense, and is quite inanely embarrassing in places, like that stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid scene with Kazuya Aoi falling between Satellizer's breasts, once you just sit back and cast aside the sneering comments inside your head re schoolboy inanities, this is a jewel. Ooh, and I just love Caitlin Glass's voice! She gives Satellizer a depth of character. All those sighs, and the dropping of the tone of voice, speaking as if in lower case when the girl is unnerved... I switched to the Japanese soundtrack just to compare, and those guys do not know what they are missing out on. So cute! I am really here for the sweet little faces rather than anything else.It is particularly violent, and I do get the feeling that personal injury is used for entertainment. There is a plethora of mangled corpses, dismembered body parts and spattering blood. West Genetics really is a school for vainglorious psychos, and the student body slips into Killer Mode as often as there are pantie shots. Which, in turn, brings me to the frequent nudity. No complaints from me there, except (a) these girls must have had implants, they are gargantuan! and (b) the sad, sad little-boy reactions to this (although one must overlook the OVA bits which aren't intended to be part of the actual story). But the breasts flop about with a life of their own. Cascading hair even cause gale-force sound effects (I have to admit, that's cute!)I do worship female beauty, and I do go ga-ga myself, but these Orientals, wow, they really never grew up, and it's all one-handed drawing, not that I am going to criticize it too much...Just explain the stigmata thingie and the Ereinbar Set thingie to me again. How freaking outlandish can you get? Can't you just say that in Orgasm Mode they really get their freak on?Addendum, 31 August 2015. Currently watching penultimate episode. Am really hooked on Satellizer's emotions. She goes from down in the dumps to perking up at a spark of hope to going all dejected again. Wonderfully drawn with, if you look closely at it, minimal effort. My heartfelt thanks to Caitlin Glass, I must mention that again, the Japanese side of things lack the finer nuances (where I checked)... If this is ever filmed, who's going to be Satellizer? Who'd risk playing the showy part, and would she be able to hold a candle to her cartoon counterpart? I THINK NOT. DON'T EVEN TRY. And this from a devout fan of real live actresses. The Raven himself.Addendum, 8 Sept. 2015, Supersized Spoiler Alert! In the final episode, something truly nasty happens, so just know, do not think that your favorite characters are safe from harm. They might get killed off. In truly graphic horrendous ways. But I'll say this: In a heart-wrenching display that lifts the 'Lewd and Sadistic' series to a higher level. Okay, so it turns out to be a false alarm, but still... For a while there, it seemed Ganessa was done for.
... View MoreNot mind-blowingly incredible like Sekirei (which I currently consider at this point to be the epitome of a good ecchi/harem anime) or "blegh" like Rosario+Vampire, just "good".The premise of Pandora, which are sci-fied superpowered girls with varying abilities, and Limiters, their male counterparts who can "freeze" an area and render all in that area immobile, is somewhat original in that both are paired up by their own choice and not assigned to one another like a lot of other anime which turn into Japanese buddy-cop comedies. This anime does NOT devolve into a buddy-cop comedy in the midst of our hero and heroine's training to fight the ambiguous aliens that come from some other dimension.The characters are "good", as I said before, each one having a history that helps explain how and why they act the way they do. Our male lead is one Mr. Kazuya Aoi, a guy whose sister was a Pandora (no, I'm not spoiling anything for you, they reveal that tidbit in the very first episode and the top of the Wiki page) and has come to Japanese Hogwart's School of Pandora-craft and Limiter-ry to follow in her footsteps. Here he quickly gets himself into trouble when he mistakes Ms. Satellizer el Bridget for his sister and hugs her in a somewhat inappropriate manner, not realizing that she has a severe case of haphephobia (look it up). This leads to some tension between the two as Kazuya constantly tries to get in good terms with "The Untouchable Queen" and she has trouble letting ANYONE get close to her, literally or proverbially.Here's my main gripe with this anime: it has a lot of dark and downright unpleasant parts in it that make it hard for me to enjoy it as much as I did things like Sekirei. Satellizer's backstory is the apex of this, still leaving a somewhat uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach when I think on it. Even the ending doesn't redeem it, with Satellizer and Kazuya's relationship failing to reach a point that satisfied me (it might satisfy YOU, though).So don't expect this to be an over-the-top comedic ecchi show, because it's not. It is dead serious about everything it brings to the table, and while that might be a nice change of pace for some people, I prefer my ecchi to be fun and upbeat. Oh, and there's a second season that I haven't watched because it hasn't been dubbed yet. When it gets a dub, I'll come back and give you my thoughts. Until then, enjoy the first season.And what kind of parent names their daughter "Satellizer", anyway?
... View MoreI think that this show is better than people say it is. If only it was still going, but it isn't. The focuses on two people with different stories who meet up and form a bond. Kazuya Aoi, who lost his sister comes to the school to become a limiter. Satellizer L. Bridget is a second year pandora who has a fear of being touched and after an incident with Aoi she is stripped of her rank and loses it to Ganessa Roland, a violent pandora who's desire it was to fight the untouchable queen and win, but after Aoi interfered with their fight, they wanted a rematch, but Satellizer ultimately won. In the heat of all of this, Kazuya ended up touching Satellizer a few times trying to apologize, but Satellizer feels that it isn't in a bad way so she decides to give Kazuya a chance eventually. I think that I can live with the high amount of female nudity, but I still wish the show hadn't stopped and kept up with the manga.
... View MoreWhen the new season of anime started I decided to take a look at this on Funimation's YouTube channel; it soon became clear that is was going to be another fan-service series with large chested girls getting their clothes ripped of as they fought. While not the most interesting genre some series such as 'Sekirei' were quite fun; unfortunately 'Freezing' lacks the humour and likable characters that made 'Sekirei' fun'. Set in a future where an enemy known as the Nova threatens Earth a small number of girls have been genetically engineered and implanted with devices called 'stigmata' which enable them to use special combat skills. When we first see these girls they are at their training academy where they seem to spend their entire time fighting each other.. not because it is part of their training but because they have taken offence at the actions of a less senior girl. The protagonists are Satellizer el Bridget, a girl who is feared by her classmates and is constantly being challenged by her seniors and Kazuya Aoi a boy who wants to be her 'limiter'; a partner who has the ability to freeze opponents. Most of the series follows her fighting and rejecting his offer to become her limiter; only in the final few episodes do the Nova arrive... then we get yet more fighting.If you like series with lots of violence and fan service you might enjoy this although the version I saw was heavily and rather crudely censored; presumably if it gets a DVD release that censorship will be removed. Unfortunately I had difficulty getting into the series as I couldn't bring myself to care for any of the characters and their constant fighting amongst each other seemed like a pointless excuse for their costumes to be torn off!
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