Highlander is a movie that came out recently. It’s another one of these English-spoken anime, where the original voices are all in English instead of the usual Japanese. I’d like to describe this one as “Afro Samurai with personality”.

Basically, what this anime does is about the same as Afro Samurai, only a lot better. The main storyline focuses on two powerhouses, one of them is out for revenge on the other because the other killed someone important. There is the side-kick who provides your occasional commentary, and of course the female love interest. All it misses is the childhood friend, but I’m actually glad he was left out.

Anyway, on top of this, Highlander manages to add enough other elements to prevent this movie from becoming as dull as Afro Samurai. For starters, Colin, the main character actually has a bit of development up to the point where he actually becomes pitiful. I won’t spoil it, but I admit I laughed at how stupid, yet tragic his character is. The side-kick also has a sense of humour, which I quite appreciated. There is also a side-story focusing on oppression, which turned out really interesting near its climax. Overall, I wouldn’t call this a failure of a movie.

That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have any flaws, though. Let’s start with the voice-acting. The cast comes with both Scottish and American ones. With the Scottish voices, there is no problem at all. Scotland and other Celtic settings are hardly touched upon by anime, which is a darn shame, since it has enough interesting background material to make for some interesting stories, and the parts of the movie that played in ancient Scotland were nice to watch, and especially the voice-acting was a delight.

I wish I could say the same about the part of the story in New York, though. The American accents just don’t fit in anime, and some particular cases of side-characters speak like a drunk Tarzan. Especially near the beginning, the dialogues just don’t flow right at all, luckily this gets better as the movie progresses.

There’s also this matter of this being an action-movie. Thank goodness it isn’t just one big excuse to display some action, but the fact remains that you can’t really get a good ending out of it, and indeed, the final scene is just one big Deus ex Machina whose only purpose is to close off the story at its climax. The major antagonist also is in dire need of some character-development.

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend you to go out of your way and check this movie out as soon as possible, as it’s not really that good. If you’re bored, though, and need an hour to burn, this may be a good choice. It’s nothing special, but at least it’s entertaining.

Ah, the first steps have been made towards Cosette and Marius’s relationship: in this episode, the two see each other for the first time, and it’s as if cupid himself interfered, as they both start to notice each other at that point. I suspect that in the next episode, they’ll be able to talk to each other, because due to Marius’s shyness, all they did for the entire episode was stare at each other. Now all that’s left is to wait and see how their relationship turns out.

In anime, love relationships can either strengthen an anime, or completely ruin it, depending on the amount of development put in both the characters and their relationship. That’s why I’ve got a lot of faith in this one, as there is no other anime, aired in 2007 that has better character-development than Les Miserables.

Another major part of the episode focused on the poverty in Paris, and I suspect that it’s a sign of things to come. Jean may have a lot of money, but it doesn’t seem that he has some sort of job, and the money will run out someday. In this episode, we see Jean and Cosette pass out a bunch of breads to a group of children, and only then it becomes apparent how much they’re suffering, and how much they’re longing for a loaf of bread. It seems that Cosette has adopted the need to save others from the years she spent with Jean. It’s also interesting to note that Gavroche also ended up with these children, but he actually tries to do something about this situation, like stealing a bunch of vegetables from merchants. It’ll be interesting to see how he’ll end up if he goes on like this.

Still, my favourite character remains Eponine. She really reminds me of Atori from Noein, who first started out as a nasty person as well, but then suddenly made a huge personality-shift. She’s also going to get it tough in the next episode, when it seems that Thenardier plans to use her and Azelma to scout for a dirty job that he’s got in mind. Something tells me that that isn’t going to end in her favour.