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Saint Tails DVD

From TOKYOPOP

Three cheers for fads. No, wait, I meant trends. No, what I actually meant were that they are both evil. They've laid waste to the music industry, it's the driving force of "fashion", and it has turned most politicians, into pollsters. Latching onto something popular and riding the wave has by no means ever been an uncommon occurrence, and Saint Tails does it's party to keep the good ship trendy chugging along the river of fads as the anime embraces Sailor Moon, ditching the lesbianism, and keeping the basic underlying super heroine theme. This is a series for kids, make no mistake. Everyone else need not apply whatsoever.

The animation is very basic here, typical television fair. Environments have very little detail and neither do the characters. The main characters in the show almost look super deformed with their unusually large, round heads. Animation itself is smooth enough, but still not up to the fluidity of other TV shows. There is also a lack of vibrancy from the colors in the show, but all in all there just isn't much to look at in terms of presentation in the episodes.

The audio doesn't leave anything memorable either. Music is cutesy and easily forgotten and the voice acting is certainly nothing special, though you do get the option between English and Japanese audio tracks on the DVD. Why this is I do not know.

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The show is far more geared towards little kids, and thus I doubt they have the patience, the will, or the ability to make it through all of the reading that would be required for a subtitled version of the show. But no matter how you look at it the audio really doesn't have a lot to say for itself.

But it's the story itself that lands Saint Tails right smack dab in the middle of "save it for the kids" country. Saint Tails is a thief that steals from crooks and gives the loot to those in need, but

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during the day she's a high school student (if that), all the while it just so happens one of her classmates is the son of the police officer in charge of tracking her down. Oddly he can't seem to recognize her at all when she is in class even though she doesn't even wear a mask when she's doing her thing. Most of the action is more along the lines of hyjinx, not choreographed fight scenes or anything like that. It all comes off a little dry, but the young'uns may be able to keep their suspension of disbelief going a little better, thus be fine with the weak, hole ridden plot. There are three episodes on the DVD and they pretty much all entail Saint Tails having to retrieve a gem of some sort. Most of the characters are archetypes to say the least with the parents, the wise friend helping Saint Tails (a nun who looks a lot like her oddly enough), the half-wits in the police out to catch her, they're all pretty uninteresting really. Even the predicaments Saint Tails gets herself into fall flat. For wacky situations and whatnot one would be far better served with Tenchi Muyo, or something else along those lines.

There are a lot of clichés with the old, tired formulas found in this series. The Robin Hood-like heroine, the none too bright crime fighter on her six, and just dull, formulaic adventures make Saint Tails not worth the time for anime fans. The only people who may get a kick out of this are little kids as it is still a simple story for
them to grasp and they'll be far more willing to swallow the plot than anyone else.

- Mr. Nash