Blast of Tempest - Civilization Blaster

The Forest-Loving ROSSMAN

I typically like unique stories; stories that I've never seen the likes of before, with twists and developments that I can't see coming... Well, let me rephrase that: I like unique stories that don't suck. Blast of Tempest is a fairly unique story (at least the way the narrative is unfolded), but it does unfortunately suck. Here's why...

Well first, let me tell you how I tried to watch this thing about 2 years ago when it first aired. I made it through episode 6, but just stopped caring about the two boring main characters as they quested to find the killer of the blonde guy's sister (who also happened to be the secret girlfriend of the darker-haired guy). Oh, and there was some boring magician girl who was stranded on a desert island who was lending these two clueless lads magic in order to stop a group of rebels in her magician's organization who hoped to kill one giant mystical tree by calling forth another enchanted log to somehow defeat it. I didn't care about her or her goals either.

See? Unique, no? But still shitty. Shitty enough to make me yawn and turn it off until about a week ago when Cupcake and I were looking for something to watch before this season's anime series ended. That's when I remembered Blast of Tempest and figured "couldn't hurt." And so we watched it. And so I wasted another 12 hours of my life on crap.

Anyway, as I just explained, these two boys (blonde boy Mahiro Fuwa and brown-haired Yoshino Takigawa) are out to avenge the murder of Aika Fuwa with the help of island-bound magician Hakaze Kusaribe (who can communicate with the boys via a wooden doll she made and put into a bottle before tossing it to the sea which they found and can talk to and hear her through... Don't think about it, Morty).

So, Hakaze is stranded on her island by the rest of the super-secret clan of magicians from the House of Kusaribe because they suddenly believe that the ancient world-tree that they worship (the Tree of Genesis) is really EEEEEVIL, and they want to kill it with another giant, fantastical tree (the Tree of Exodus, of course), but they know that Hakaze will get in their way if she's just lazing about Japan because she is the Tree's guardian. But the hottie magician Hakaze is able to use her walkie-talkie doll to talk to her proxy boys and direct them on how to stockpile more of her hidden-away magical weapons in order to bring the rebellion down... But TWIST: Hakaze is really already dead.

See, apparently the head of the magical rebels had set Hakaze apart from real time on that island, and he had already retrieved her bones from the island and now keeps them in a barrel within the forcefield where they're trying to revive the Tree of Exodus by calling forth giant, flying "fruit" that looks like organic Eyes of Vogler (which turns anybody that's near it that isn't magical into metal statues... As magical world-saving trees are wont to do). But don't worry about this horrific side-effect, especially because the story forgets about it and its terrible implications too rather quickly when it turns out that YES, the Tree of Genesis IS indeed evil, and the Tree of Exodus (and the wimpy, crybaby magician warrior summoned to protect it) is the world's only hope from being "Civilization Blasted..." Which is all conjecture and weak theory by everyone involved since there is NO FUCKING POSSIBLE WAY TO TELL WHAT TWO GIANT TREES ARE THINKING OR PLANNING ON DOING SINCE THEY DON'T TALK OR OR MOVE OR DO ANYTHING IN THIS STORY. EVER.

See, this is why this show is so frustrating to me: every character makes giant assumptions about the two magic trees' intentions with no proof. Neither side has any real validity that their side is right, or that either even has the right idea or is even in the same ballpark as what will really happen if one tree or the other "wins." Ugh, and then in the second half of this bizarre tale, when we are supposed to take the Kusaribe rebels' side in taking down the "evil" Tree of Genesis, and when Hakaze is suddenly back alive and infatuated with Yoshino, it suddenly turns into a trippy Terminator rip-off where Hakaze has to go back into the past to find out who killed Aika Fuwa because the two boys really want to know.... Only once she's back there she finds out that Aika was really the original Magician guardian of the Tree of Exodus (*GASP*) and knew that the Tree of Genesis was evil (just because), but when she found out from Hakaze that she is supposed to die, instead of using her VASTLY superior powers (compared to Hakaze) to chop the demon Genesis Tree down, she kills herself... Her only reason being "she died in the original time line."

I almost yelled at my TV over this lame reasoning. There had been absolutely NO TALK of time paradoxes ripping the universe apart or anything leading up to her decision to kill herself. Her only logic was "I died bloody and horrible according to this strange time-traveling woman who is the servant to my master's enemy.... So I guess I have to kill myself and make my brother intensely sad and my boyfriend borderline suicidal. Oh wells."

This series was just so fucking retarded... I did eventually grow to like the characters for the most part (though Mahiro Fuwa's sister complex was slightly disturbing, and I wanted the new Magician of Exodus [that whiny, mopey turd nugget] to die more painful than Aika did), and the art and design of the show was alright (nothing spectacular, but different enough from other shows), it's just the plot.... It had so many holes, it dragged in all the wrong places (like at the epic fight at the end of the first half of the series where they spend [I'm not exaggerating] 4 episodes discussing how it was possible that Hakaze could be on the island 2 years in their past, and then how to bring her back to the present [which involved a giant paradox of its own which was never dissected beyond telling the viewer "yup, that's how it happened."])...

So in the end, yes, Tempest was unique, but it was not a good unique. It was bad. Spankably bad. "Bad dog!" bad. Things that seemed important (like the mass-murders of a dozen towns around Japan from where the flying Exodus "fruit" emerge, turning everybody to metal) are forgotten, and people change their minds very easily about whether their entire existence up till that point was incorrectly lived, and then characters kill themselves for no plausible reason. If you want a GOOD story about a secret organization trying to save the world from a strange invasion check out Evangelion or RahXephon. Stay away from Blast of Tempest.

This anime series was lame. The story was all over the place, jumped logic tracks multiple times to the point of playing hopscotch, and characters' personalities were altered for the sake of the shitty story and not vice versa (which would be considered organically-written "good storytelling"). I had to force myself to watch the last 10 episodes just to finish it up. I give it 3.12 out of 25.7 Trees of Tempestuousness.

And what was up with the horrible attempts to try and mirror Shakespeare's Hamlet and The Tempest? They kept bringing up both, but neither of those classic plays really had jack or shit to do with or in common with this trash. Fuck you, Japan. Just because you mention better stories in your own shitty tale doesth not make your narrative any better.

The Treebearded MEGAPLAYBOY

So you're telling me that an inanimate evil tree is the big bad of this show? So this thing is the anime equivalent of Final Fantasy 5? Laaaaaaaaaaaame.

I really didn't like this shitty-shitty bo-bitty show. I outright hated this mother fucker when we followed that mage chick back in time to see who killed that cute girl who was dating that lame-o who is now running around with his girlfriend's brother. Once we saw that the lil' bitch killed herself, and only because some strange lady told her that she died, I just wanted the two big, bad trees to kill the whole world. We're too stupid to live if we write and animate shitty shows like this.

Fuck it all. This show destroyed my motha-fuckin' faith in man. AND anime -- which is an even worse crime.

This was a baaaaad, baaaaaaaaaaaaaad, sad, mad, not glad, but just a fad, little show. I do not recommend it, sir. Do not watch it, yo.

TAMMI With an "i"

All y'all mother fuckers kin suck mah dick. An evil tree that just sits there is not mah idea of a leadin' bad guy. Ah want a Darth Vader. Ah want a Voldemort. Ah want a Sauron... Ah do not want a large twig that does nothin' but gets other people to fight for it while at most it just grows a couple extra branches.

This lil' show was just all lame an' all. It was kinda borin' too. Ah mean, when y'all spend 5 or so episodes arguin' over how a girl could be trapped on an island when she's already dead, then you know that the writers are just full of horse shit an' have no idea what they plan to do with the rest of the story.

Ah hated every last character too. They were all either dumb, stupid, or retarded. That one human turnip who was the powerful "good tree" hero was all three, and a wuss. Nobody did anything impressive either, even though they were all like magical and all. Ah mean, they were all magicians, but the only magic they used was to make them move faster or not turn to metal when the giant eye-fruit-tree-things appeared.... And what the hell was that all about anyway? Where did that major storyline go? Those giant eye-fruit-tree-things massacred half of Japan, but in the second half of this thang not one person even thought to ask, "So those giant eye-fruit-tree-things... They killed all those people by turning them to metal, right?... But because they're on the side of the "good tree" we're just going to accept that?... Alright, jus' askin'." Dumb. Stupid. Retarded.

Once again, this show was filled with dumb, stupid, and retarded characters, and the whole show was dumb, stupid and retarded. Ah don't know how, but apparently Ah only come over to watch the bad shit that Japan has to offer. It sucks.