In Review: The Law of Ueki

Finally, I finished this one.

Ueki Kousuke has the power to transform garbage to trees. This power was given to him by Kobasen, a teacher and also a God candidate. But unknown to Ueki, he is not the only power user that exists. The winning God candidate becomes God and the top power user will get a blank zai, and by writing on it get any ability that he/she wants. In the quest to become the next God, not all God candidates’ intentions are pure. Ueki gets dragged into all this, and interesting battles ensue!

• Animation at 0.50. Acceptable, but never excellent.

• Characters at 0.75. Characters are plentiful here. And interestingly, they also usually feature the characters’ backgrounds before they became power users, and that’s a positive point. I especially like Sano and Rinko. However, there are also annoying characters, and Mori and Hideyoshi top that list. Hideyoshi the monkey is mostly useless throughout the time he appears, but I also grudgingly admit that they found a surprising way on making him a little significant in the final episode. Mori’s voice is annoying, that’s more than enough to make me dislike her.

• Music at 0.5. Hmm, nothing extraordinary, just your average music.

• Story/Plot/Dialogue at 0.75. Whenever those overly dramatic/cheesy dialogue happens, I always feel the urge to hit the stop button. There’s lots of interesting battles, but there’s also a lot of talk. Mostly about the law of this character and that character and that, blah blah blah. And yeah, I do think it’s too much that almost any bad power user has a change of heart after encountering Ueki.

• Entertainment value at 1.25. If you disregard the dialogue, the battles will become more interesting than the ones in Fate Stay Night. Not convinced? There are no out of this world battles here, no slice of life reality, just kids given with interesting powers. So, to have sat through 51 episodes of this series means it must have been enjoyable enough and worth the time.

Okay, so I wasn’t able to make a first impressions post about this anime because I watched it way before I went into blogging. The first few episodes were so-so. I was about to really drop this series, until Ueki got his dandy talent! It was hilarious, and so I kept on watching, though I stopped for a while when anime I thought were more interesting arrived.

Now dialogue aside, what really earned this series my respect was the way the battles and how the power users used their powers was executed. I mean, to be able to provide 20+ characters with unique powers, backgrounds and personalities is awesome! But what’s more praiseworthy is the fact that these powers are used in very interesting ways you could not have imagined, even if the power doesn’t even look formidable or useful at all.

Now that’s not all. There are also several twists in the story, such as the fact that power users were not given their powers just because some Heavenly being likes them, but that there’s actually a competition to determine who becomes God! Another is that though at first, it’s a one-on-one battle between power users, in the end it becomes a team effort in the competition to determine the next God. And power users can also level-up! Now I’m not gonna spoil anymore, for the sake of those who might want to see this anime for themselves. 🙂

Favorite power users

– Rinko, with the power to turn beads into bombs.

– Sano, with the power to turn towels into iron.

Most despised power users

– Hideyoshi, most useless power user

– Mori, most annoying power user

Best fight– I can’t decide, actually. But I like it when it’s Sano who’s fighting. He has brains too.

Now this anime might not appeal to everyone, it did not impress me much at first too. But for me this is more watchable than some anime with cute characters or harems but are totally worthless crap, like Tonagura or Chocotto Sister. Now I really said it.

Rating: 3.75/5

 

Sorry about the names, they looked ok before I uploaded them. But the boy with the green hair is Ueki, beside him is Sano and Rinko. The other girl is Mori.