Best of MAB - Figure 17 - Tsubasa & Hikaru

The blog celebrates its first anniversary in a few days so I'll be highlighting some of the shows I enjoyed blogging in the past year over the next week. Hope y'all enjoy it!

"If this first episode is any indication of how the rest of the series will be, I'm going to really like this show!"
Matthew, on Figure 17 episode 1, February 5th, 2004

Figure 17 is the first show I blogged pretty much in its entirety last year. I have no idea why I didn't watch it earlier (that goes for a lot of things) since it is one of the best shows I've ever seen, period. Actually, it is the only show that I've gone out and purchased the DVDs on hearing good reviews alone. Thank goodness it worked out, ne?

Read Figure 17 blog entries

For those who watched Rozen Maiden, Tsubasa will be a familiar character, as she's very much like Jun in being shy, not having all that many friends, and lacking confidence in herself. But something to change that always has to happen in anime ;) In Tsubasa's case, an encounter with an alien who's fighting these extremely nasty creatures called Maguar leads to some rather unexpected things... In this case, Tsubasa gets an identical twin called Hikaru, but she's not so identical, being much more outgoing than Tsubasa... For more details read my entry on episode 1.

There are some really great action scenes and the sci-fi aspect of the show is excuted well, but what's really important in Figure 17 is Tsubasa and Hikaru's relationship and watching Tsubasa grow. As was the case with Jun in Rozen Maiden I was really able to connect with Tsubasa and not merely symphathize and feel sorry for her, but empathize with her since I was much the same way when I was her age. Yajima Akiko's excellent performance as Tsubasa, portraying her emotions in a very realistic way that I could identify with, made that even moreso. But my gosh, I didn't have to deal with what poor Tsubasa had to deal with... I really wanted to hurt someone on the staff after that happened. This show will make you cry, I can guarantee you that ;)

Figure 17 is different than your traditional show in a few ways. Number one, episodes are 45 minutes long instead of the standard 25. That is a bit long and you would think things would be drawn out, but there was only one episode where I wasn't pulled in for the entire 45 minutes. At the eyecatch most times I was surprised we were already halfway though. Number two... and Stripey, if you think waiting a week between episodes of AIR is unbearable, think about what everybody watching Figure 17 on AT-X had to go through. One episode per month... ONE episode per month! I would have died if I had to wait a month between episodes! Especially later on in the show... Technically speaking now, the quality of the animation by OLM is pretty high up there (though not to stratospheric AIR standards), being pretty much OVA quality in lovely 16:9 aspect for all of the 13 episodes it runs. Opening and ending songs by the Alfee are also enjoyable, as well as in-show music..

Speaking about Media Blasters' DVD release... I have some issues, mostly with translation. The translation is inconsistant from DVD packaging to subtitles, the opening/endings are translated incorrectly in a few places, and subtitles aren't as accurate as I'd like them to be in a few places. But don't let that dissuade you from watching it. Aside from that, transfer quality is wonderful and some ncie extras are thrown in as well.

If anybody out there hasn't watched Figure 17, I highly, highly recommend you check it out. You won't be disappointed. It's rather unfortunate this show came in under the radar of most fans out there.. There's a DVD box with all of the DVDs out, so pick it up (for only $63 at RightStuf, much less than I spent since I bought each DVD individually) if you can ;)