20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A good anime..., December 26, 2000
By A Customer
When I first saw the cover, I was very skeptical. The name was silly and the picture was ridiculous! How in the world can this anime actually be good? Maybe it was one of those animes which a company just releases to fill up it's library with? I rented the first volume (episodes 1&2), and was incredibly surprised. It was a fantastic anime! After that, I went on amazaon.com and bought the DVD, ready to see the rest of the series. Here is how I found it out to be...
You should buy this anime because:
1. Photon is an amazingly unique character in the anime world. His sincerity, kindness, innocence, and humble nature is something which I have never seen before. And I have seen quite a large amount of anime too. For me, just to see how this unique character interacts with others and his environment, was almost worth the price for this DVD.
2. The first two episodes are jewels in terms of entertainment value. The animation is smooth, the music rocks, and many interesting things occur in terms of story.
3. The voice actors for the English dub is nicely done. Everyone does a very credible job, even to the point where it surprises me to wonder how well they can manipulate and channel their voices.
4. At the price amazon.com is selling it for, it's a steal! Try to get all six episodes at such a reasonable price.
As great as Photon may be, there are indeed flaws I should mention...
Why you shouldn't buy this DVD:
1. After episodes 1 & 2, things go downhill a bit in terms of story. Mainly because there is no main purpose to this anime. Everyone has small petty quests, but they don't really amount to anything in terms of a major plot.
2. The main villain (Papachareeno), while enormously funny in the first two episodes, becomes quite annoying as the story progresses. Basically, his loud mouth and egocentric personality becomes overly repetitive and tiresome.
3. The animation quality weakens as the episodes progress. It seems as though the animators were losing steam.
4. The techno-babble used in the anime is hard to follow the first time around. The references to this type of energy, and how it would fare against some other type of energy is very confusing, and it may be a source of annoyance to some.
5. Episode 6 is overly serious and twisted. While the overall theme of the show is light-hearted and funny, episode 6 does a complete 180-degree turn, and becomes unbearably hard to handle after all that slapstick and comical banter found in the previous episodes.
6. There seems to be an error in the middle of episode 4. For some reason, the DVD stopped playing and it forced a systems crash on my computer. Bear in mind that there is nothing wrong with my DVD-player, and I have a fairly extensive collection of other DVD animes. My DVD-ROM drive is a Creative Labs 8X with a Dxr3 mpeg decoder, for those of you with some computer knowledge.
7. There doesn't seem to be a conclusion to the ending. For a person like me, who likes closure, the ending may prove to be disappointing. Basically, the ending is okay, but it left many questions for me which I will never find answers to.
One final note:
Though it says 13 and up on the back, this anime is only intended for mature audiences. There are some crude sexual innuendos throughout the entire anime, and the violence level as the episodes progress grow exponentially. Think hard and decide well if this anime is worth it for you. Overall, it is a good anime. =)
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You won't stop laughing for days, October 22, 2000
I saw the entirety of Photon almost a year ago fansubbed, and I died laughing. Every once in a while, an animation house needs time to let off steam after the more serious series, and Photon represents enough steam to melt the polar ice caps. From AIC, the group behind Tenchi Muyo, El Hazard, and Dual, this series is so much more than a laugh a minute. It is a bit short (only 6 episodes total), but considering you can now have it on one DVD, how could you pass that up? Also, while extremely crack-addled for the most part, the ending has a moment of seriousness and is one of the best endings in anime, period. If you love anime and bellylaughs, you owe it to yourself to buy this DVD yesterday!
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is the best OAV I have ever seen., December 12, 2000
Wow This show is awesome. don't even hesitate to buy it. If I could I would give it ten stars, not five. It's a story about how a young boy, and a rouge space pilot are mixed up with the conqueror, sir papacha nanadan. This anime is so great in fact that not only do you wish there were more episodes , but you also wish that they would make a whole OAV devoted to the bad guy, since he is such a great and lovable character, and a whole twenty six episode tv series for Photon and his adventures.
P.s.-I was watching anime for a year before I knew what an OAV(original animated video) was. It refers to the anime series which are released straight to video in japan, then,after they have made their money, some of the more succesful OAV's will be shown on japanese TV. Anime tv series are the opposite, going from Tv to video. OAV's are also much shorter, and usually don't last more than 12 episodes, while a TV series can go on forever
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