8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
To live forever, July 22, 2006
This review is from: Mermaid Forest (DVD)
One of Rumiko Takahashi's most successful "side projects" is the Mermaid series, about a pair of immortals struggling to find a way to become mortal again. The short series "Mermaid Forest" has neither the wacky action or mythic fantasy of her other series, but instead has a melancholy, gritty feeling.
The stories center on mermaids, and what eating their toxic flesh will do to a human being. A tiny number become beautiful immortals who never age and will never die, unless they are burned or their heads are cut off. But most people either cough up blood and die immediately, or turn into bug-eyed, veiny purplish monsters.
In the first episode, Yuta has been wandering the earth for five hundred years. One day he finds a tiny, secluded village, populated by eerie old women who stab him to (temporary) death -- and are keeping a pampered teenage girl named Mana trapped. Yuta spirits the naive girl away, finds out that she's an immortal -- and learns the gruesome fate that the women have in store for her.
The stories that follow flash back on Yuta's lonely life before Mana, showing us the man who outlived his wife and all his friends, and who went searching for a way to become mortal again. On the way he falls in love with a pirate girl, encounters a child brought back to life with mermaid sorcery, and becomes briefly involved with a young lady who is cruelly betrayed.
But in the present, Yuta and the naive Mana have even more adventures -- a serial killer with a stolen eye, a man who only transformed HALFWAY into a monster, an immortal woman desperate to keep her "son," and a malignant child who feeds unwitting women mermaid flesh in order to get an immortal "mother." And most chillingly, Mana is kidnapped by a beautiful woman deformed by mermaid blood, whose hatred of her elderly twin will trap both Mana and Yuta...
Don't expect wacky antics a la "Ranma 1/2," or fantastical battles as in "Inuyasha." "Mermaid Forest" is a whole different animal, full of bittersweet flashbacks and a lot of gruesome action. Blood, monsters and hacked bodies are scattered through every plot, interspersed by pretty scenery and beautiful shots of swimming mermaids.
The animation is a bit different from previous work, since it's mostly computer-generated, which gives it a rather antiseptic look. But the stories have a philosophical bent beyond just studying how it would suck to be an immortal -- her stories explore a mother's obsessive love, prejudice, captivity, the evil that children can have, and love that lasts beyond the grave.
It might sound suspenseless to have immortals as the series leads, but it's not. Mana and Yuta are a fascinating contrast -- one is a sad, seasoned man who has been alive for five centuries, and hasn't dared to get close to anyone before. The other is a teenage girl who never left her bed until Yuta freed her, and has a bit of a princess complex.
The story hints at an attraction between them, and Yuta even has a nightmare about losing Mana as he's lost everyone else in his life. But don't expect Yuta and the immature Mana to take it very far. Why would they? They have all the time in the world.
The complete "Mermaid Forest" is an open-ended, beautifully-made series, and at its heart it's all about how we all need someone with us. Powerful and pretty.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mermaid Forest = okay series., May 12, 2007
This review is from: Mermaid Forest (DVD)
Mermaid Forest is a series about a guy who ate Mermaid flesh and was bless with immortal and eternal youth. Sounds great right? Mean never getting old, not worrying about dying, sounds like a dream. Well our main character knows better. After watching his wife and friends grow old and die from old age while he remains young and healthy, he sets out on a quest to become normal again. The series picks up 5 hundred years after he ate the mermaid flesh in which he finds a girl named Mia how is like him and about to meet a terrible fate and goes from there.
Mermaid Forest is a good series. Not a perfect or ground breaking anime, note the four stars. The animation is wonderful, all the characters are attractively drawn especially the women. The animation is decent not eye poppingly fluid and realistic but good. The music is somewhat forgettable. The character designs are as expected from the creator excellent. The acting is also well done.
Now for the bad parts. I should say bad part. As you watch the series it becomes blarringly obvious that the writer is accustomed to a hundred episodes to develop the characters, their motives and plot and just cannot make the adjustment completely to having only thirteen episodes. First two episodes get things going introducing the main characters, then immediately goes into Yuta's past. This serves to show the type of person Yuta was before meeting Mia and the type of life he led up to that point. This would have been fine is half the series weren't made up of these flash back type episodes that should have been the first episodes not scattered about the length of the series. Next is that you never really know what time period the stories in because it never says. Next is that you really don't get to really liking and connecting with the characters until the series is almost over. That's pretty much it, if the series had been arranged different, the dates the story was in were given and was a twenty-six episode series with time to slowly develop characters the series would have been much better.
Now then the all important question buy, rent or forget. Personally I like the series and it costs less then $40 so I'd say it's a buy but only if you don't have anything better to buy.
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