The Show:
The seventh volume of Peacemaker brings the show to a very
bloody conclusion. As the Shinsengumi rampage through the city looking
for revenge for their fallen member, Tetsunosuke has to finally decide
if he is willing to kill to protect his comrades. This volume, like
the last, is much darker and gore filled than the volumes leading up to
it. This series certainly changes at the end.
Series Synopsis:
In nineteenth century Japan, young Tetsunosuke joins a fighting band,
the Shinsengumi. (They were the antagonists in Ruroni Kenshin,
and this series is one of the few that show them in a positive light.)
and He does this in order to learn to fight and become stronger, so that
he can avenge his parents death. He's still not sure if he wants
to become a killer though, and for the time he's a page one of the leaders
of the group.
The Shinsengumi are the police of the capital city of Japna, but they
aren't without troubles though. There are several groups in Japan
that would like to see the members of this group killed. There are
several factions warring, and the Shinsengumi are holding on to power,
but just barely.
This volume:
Things come to a head in this last volume of the series. The Shinsengumi
are running through the capital looking for any anti-shoganate members
who are hiding at the inns throughout the town. They arrest them
if they can, and kill them if they run. The blood flows in rivers
as some of the anti-shoganates stand to fight.
As the fight begins, Tetsunosuke is still traumatized from his near
death experience in the previous volume. Gathering his nerves, he
rushes to the scene of battle and runs right into a confrontation with
a wounded but powerful fighter. Fighting against his own demons,
he fights the enemy but is put in a position where he has to kill or be
killed.
This volume had a lot more action and adventure than the previous volumes,
which I really liked, but I was disappointed that they changed the tone
so radically. After being fairly tame, the last two volumes were
filled with splattered blood, severed limbs people being tortured to death
and young children being driven insane. I don't mind that in series
like Gantz, but that show starts off with bloody scenes and doesn't spring
them on you in the last volumes.
Having said that, the animation in the fight sequences was very impressive.
They were fully animated, without any of the cheap pans across still images
that are sometimes used to save money. There was a lot of camera
movement with attacks from the point of view of the sword and sharp close
up angles that would have been very hard to do in a live action film.
I was really impressed with the thought and work that went into these scenes.
The series also ends on an ambiguous note. Tetsunosuke has grown
a little as a character, but he's chosen to walk a seemingly impossible
path. I am more interested in how he thinks he can achieve his goals
now than I was at the beginning of the series. Things are not resolved
for the Shinsengumi either, as a matter of fact, they are more precarious
than ever, as one character notes. This didn't seem to be the right
place to end the show. Of course the manga is still running in Japan,
but you would think that before someone starts an anime series, they would
consider how it was going to end.
Looking back over this series, it was about average but it has one fatal
flaw: viewers don't care about the main characters. Tetsunosuke was
interesting at the beginning, but they didn't develop him enough.
The relationship between Tetsunosuke, the fighter, and his brother, the
accountant, was a dynamic that I was hoping would be explored, but it was
almost totally dropped. The supporting characters were also fairly
bland. Many of them had a lot of potential to develop into interesting
people that you could care about, but this was never done in the series.
Overall, this series had a lot of potential but it was never developed.
The DVD:
This volume contains another scant three episodes in a white keepcase
with an insert. Even with the credits, that runs to a bit over 70
minutes, which isn't a lot of content. I really wish they would put
at least four episodes on each volume. ADV gets docked some points
for stretching this mediocre-at-best series over seven volumes instead
of the usual six.
Audio:
This DVD offers the viewer the choice of an English 5.1 dub or the original
Japanese language stereo track. I listened to both tracks, and I
enjoyed the original language a little bit more than the dub track.
The dub track had some strange sounding accents that didn't really blend
well with the show, though there were all minor characters. Most
of the Geishas had pretty awful accents. The English track did make
good use of the soundstage, with sound effects and some dialog coming from
the rear. The Japanese track made use of the front soundstage and
was just as full.
Video:
The full frame image looked pretty good. The picture was just
a tad soft, with the lines not being as tight as they could be, but this
was very minor. The colors had a nice tone to them, and the contrast
was good. Digital defects were just about nonexistent. A very
nice looking DVD.
Extras:
This disc also includes clean opening and closing animations and a series
of production sketches. There are also a pair of two-minute long
video "Character Collections" that give the background information on Toshimaru
and Saya, and a music video. One of the more interesting bonus items
from this series is the Festival of Gion Video. This is a
17-minute spoken story illustrated with stills from the show. A member
of the Shinsengumi tells a tale about the formation of the group and some
of the events that took place involving them. Well worth watching.
Final Thoughts:
When all has been said and done, Peacemaker wasn't nearly as
good as it could have been. The characters were never developed,
there were too many plots that were dropped and not enough engaging material
to carry the series. I enjoyed this final volume a little more than
some of those leading up to it, but it still lacked the emotional punch
that a final volume should have. Add to that the fact that the series
wasn't wrapped up as tightly as it should have been, and this volume rates
a Rental.
Buy: