Tribe 13 (Spoilers run on chakra)

[ComicX6]

Kizamaro is all fired up about something or another again. Or maybe he just really needs to use the bathroom. Why else would he be waving his behind around like that? Subaru calls Misora about whatever the bug thing is.

Title Screen: Training-deosaru (I think...)

Luna and co. take the monorail up to the mountains. Everything's green, and looks pretty. Good to know that the world won't be completely despoiled in the 23rd century. Their trek takes them through the woods, over a rope bridge, to a ninja dojo in the middle of the wilderness.

Poof of smoke and some weird guy appears before them. He's Jackie Hanzou, and not only has he stolen Hyde's quirky music from Tribe 7, but also a Naruto headband. He also spews random English words too. Well, enough of dealing with him, what's with that weird laughter from over yonder? Oh, it's just Misora and Cancer Bubble on the roof of the padoga. Dressed as ninja. They leap off of the roof to the ground. Misora makes it safely, Cancer Bubble does not. It appears that Jackie is their 'senpai' (Mentor).

So now every one is dressed like ninja. Ouch, Subaru got shafted with his costume. Gonta smacks Kizamaro for having a title that's too long winded.
Well, now that they're training for Jackie's Spring Scroll, Kizamaro throws some shuriken at him, but he just uses the infamous Kawarmiri. Gonta tries to tackle him, but Jackie uses Bushin to vanish.

Well, he takes off, and everyone pursues. But they can't follow him up a cliff face! They lose him in trees! Get a boulder rolled at them! Have to cross a lake by walking on water! Cancer Bubble simplifies things there by using Tidal Wave to get everyone across. But I guess that move has a time limit. Too bad. Well, Jackie gives two scrolls to Misora and Cancer Bubble at least. Lion Fire, I think.

Back at the dojo, Hyde shows up. Subaru and Warrock recognize him as Phantom Black. A helicopter shows up too. Yep, it's Gori. Subaru and Warrock recognize him too. They want training too! Orihime calls Subaru, yadda yadda. Hyde and Gori flee from the giant boulder while Jackie looks on with disapproval.
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Preview: Bly charges forward, he and Subaru lock blades (awful animation error here), Yeti Blizzard and Phantom Black struggle over something, Bly leaps away from Berserker Rockman, both Phantom Black and Bly look surprised, and something happens to Yeti Blizzard.
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Can you say, crack? That's what this episode was, from start to finish. I don't even want to try to make sense of this, but it seems that this will somehow lead to the Shuriken OOPArt. Something about a Tiger Scroll in the preview too. As far as the ninja costumes go, I think that Misora had the best, hands down. Subaru got an awful one, no two ways around it.

...You know, for some reason that I can't possibly imagine, I swear that I've heard Jackie's seiyuu somewhere before...
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' I don't care if the buzz isn't real- I can roleplay being drunk!'

- Balmung, .hack vol. 1

I now have a site! Web page rather: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1048042/

[Malik]

Misora and Cancer were considered Subaru, Luna, Gonta, and Kizamaro's senpai because they were there longer. Cancer called them genin, which, according to Naruto and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, is a lower ranking ninja.

Cancer's timer was not a timer on his tidal wave, but a timer on how long Misora and Cancer could be there, for obvious reasons.

I think all their ninja outfits were horrible. I mean, brightly colored and conspicuous? You'd have to be blind not to spot those colors anywhere and if you were, there's no point in being a stealthy ninja.
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[Malik]

Misora and Cancer were considered Subaru, Luna, Gonta, and Kizamaro's senpai because they were there longer. Cancer called them genin, which, according to Naruto and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, is a lower ranking ninja.

Cancer's timer was not a timer on his tidal wave, but a timer on how long Misora and Cancer could be there, for obvious reasons.

I think all their ninja outfits were horrible. I mean, brightly colored and conspicuous? You'd have to be blind not to spot those colors anywhere and if you were, there's no point in being a stealthy ninja.
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[Shakai]

They all failed as ninjas.

Also what was all that about spring rolls?
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The time is come. Bid farewell to your bloodstained past.
Forsake the darkness you once embraced, or the light will find no hold.
Vanquish the dark knight! You and he are one no more!

[Vast Rendan]

"Shut up, Genin." - Cancer Bubble

@Malik: Brightly colored clothing hasn't stopped the Naruto cast yet.

Misora's and Luna's costumes were the best.

Thank goodness Tribe-On Berserker comes back in the next episode. Withdrawal symptoms were almost kicking in.
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ToadMan SP's Blog

[Unknown Neo]

True but does Misora's pink-ish hair stand out more then any orange the cast may have had on? So one answer that please.

[Nenji]

I kept on thinking about how inappropriate it was to have children running around throwing shurikens. After all, we spend so much time telling them not to play with sharp objects.

Otherwise I was amused that everyone started saying -osaru, even Cancer who lost his regular -buku. XD
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Previously known as "HiKaizer"

[JH24]

My interest in this series is slowly vanishing and this episode did very little to counter that. What was this? It was so...weird.


The art was quite good IMHO, too bad it was wasted on a weak episode like this. Next one seems interesting, hopefully the next Oopart will fall into the hands of Hyde or Bly. Would make things somewhat more interesting.

And I really hope that Bly has something to counter Rockman's Berserker form. If he looses again and doesn't retrieve an Oopart it will really degrade his character in my view. And why do I get the feeling Gori and Hyde are turning into 'comic relief' villains?
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This great avatar is made by Synchro-kun. Thank you!

[SeijinKage13]

[TheWebbuilder]

[ComicX6]

See, ever since Stream, the anime has had a problem of not utilizing the material before them to the fullest. Stream started by giving us (or me, at least), the impression of being a desperate struggle to convince a god that mankind was worth saving. Then the Neo-WWW came along, and we all know how things ended up.

Beast fared a bit better, but it slowly began to run out of steam by episode 15, and in the end, the game story that it was based on blew it out of the water in every possible aspect.

I guess the reason I'm still watching is for the awesome moments that come along every now and then. The first 25 episodes of Ryuusei were mostly decent, yet nothing to write home about, then BAM, we got Ryuusei 26, easily the darkest episode in the series thus far. I sat through the filler doldrums of the second half, to be rewarded by the final episodes (I like to think that 3/4s of Ryuusei 55 don't exist).

Maybe if Ryuusei had gotten a full timeslot, we would see more development. I'm as irritated as the next guy that they've simplified a lot of the characters, and have sacrificed important game material for 'FM Escapades.' It's a shame, because I found the characters in the first Starforce game to be overall more developed and interesting than most of the main cast in EXE.

What Ryuusei needs is some fresh writers and some better art. Maybe once the whole OOPArt arc is over we'll see this 'cooler' storyline that Fuyuka Oura alluded to. I'm still holding out for a turnaround, because I know there's more to look forward to. Orihime's betrayal, Solo getting some development (I hope), Empty seeing some action, and Gori's Dinosaur OOPArt.

The intro gives off some impressive vibes, so it's about time that the show that follows lives up to that.
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' I don't care if the buzz isn't real- I can roleplay being drunk!'

- Balmung, .hack vol. 1

I now have a site! Web page rather: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1048042/

[Shakai]

As soon as the whole struggle with Andromeda was over in Season 1, I stopped watching. Then I started seeing the thread about the last five or so episodes and I started watching again. But I didn't bother catching up on all the filler I had missed.

Tribe is severely disappointing me. I mean, I don't really like the look of the game, but I'm just trying to have hope that the anime will convince me otherwise. It's not.

But this is somewhat how the first game went.

Character is introduced
Character faces struggle
Character is FM'd.
Character starts a crisis in FM form
Subaru goes in to stop Character.
Character gives sob story about how life isn't going his/her way.
Character gets butt kicked.
Character repents and FM is <supposedly> defeated.
Character becomes Subaru's friend or whatever. And doesn't play much significance to the plot afterwards.

Well, most of them at least.
:/ Tribe's just summarizing that experience.
_________________
The time is come. Bid farewell to your bloodstained past.
Forsake the darkness you once embraced, or the light will find no hold.
Vanquish the dark knight! You and he are one no more!

[TheWebbuilder]

Summarizing it to the extreme, and therein lies the problem.

The formula worked in RnR/SF1 because each character was developed individually. You got to know each one throughout the story, which made them being FM'd that much more of a struggle (especially in Luna's case). Yeah, you knew it was coming, but because you had known the character it still had an impact.

The anime, however, bypasses all of the character development; so you're left with a hollow feeling when Osa goes evil. It's more of a 'villain of the week' feeling rather than the feeling you get when someone loses his humanity.

For me, the realization that I just didn't care about any of the anime characters came back in Tribe 4. I saw Bly/Burai pounding down on WarRock... and I realized that I didn't care. I wasn't horrified, I wasn't wondering what WarRock would do to escape, it was tense, yeah, but in a 'ohnoez! Bly's about to kill someone!' way instead of a 'OMMETTAURS! HE'S ABOUT TO SLAY WARROCK!!!'.

Needless to say, there's a big difference.

I dunno, maybe I'm just spoiled because I've been watching my DVD collections of The Pretender and SatAM: Sonic the Hedgehog (not the looney tunes rip, but the darker version of the show) both of which have excellent story lines and characters that you actually identify with... Rewatching those two shows have just really torpedoed my interest in a lot of things right now...
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[robo]

So basically, I haven't been missing out these past several weeks? Watched maybe four or five eps and dropped out.

Totally agree on the lack of character development since about...episode 30 of the first season. Hopefully the game, when it comes Westward will be a lot meatier. It's weird though. Usually, lack of development is okay in a game, because the focus is on how to play it and the fun factor. The show, if anything, should be BETTER about the plot. I suppose this can be attributed to the 10-minute timeslot though. Watching 22-24 minute shows like Gurren Lagann and Toward the Terra (well, everything else practically) have really reminded me how much more the episodes can accomplish in only twice the length of an RnR episode.

[Razor]

[TheWebbuilder]

Actually, the first season of EXE incorporated the games rather well. It followed them just enough to stay true to the games but took enough creative license to make them unique. The second season was more random, but still contained game elements...

And by the time Axess rolled around the writers basically chucked the game's storyline out the window, never to be seen again until Ryuusei... And we all know how that turned out...

Yes, I realize that the whole Dimensional Area concept came from BN3, but the idea was mangled so much that it didn't resemble the other at all.

However, following the storyline doesn't make an anime good. I don't really care if Ryuusei and Tribe follow the games storyline or not; but I do care about the bad storytelling we've been getting lately.
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[Shakai]

He's right you know. *shot*

When I was playing BN1, I could almost always tell what was going to happen next because of having watched the first few episodes of the anime.

Well, mostly.
_________________
The time is come. Bid farewell to your bloodstained past.
Forsake the darkness you once embraced, or the light will find no hold.
Vanquish the dark knight! You and he are one no more!

[SeijinKage13]

Wow, this seems to have affected many of you. Does that mean you'll stop watching Ryuusei, considering what you just said as of this week?
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As a Deviant, I work alone on my projects.
Soon to be completed: 'unnamed' series coming this August to my DA.

[ComicX6]

Well, I'm gonna keep watching. While I don't really like what Xebec's been doing to the series over the course of the last few years, I put up with it. I realized a long time ago that the anime isn't the best series in the world, and never will be, but I'm still holding out for the stuff that will go down in the future. This was just a crappy episode. One crappy episode I can let slide. We are, after all, only thirteen episodes in of fifty-something, so we have plenty of more stuff to go through, and we have a new art director to look forward to in two weeks.

So yes, I'll be here, providing you with your summaries and commentary as long as I can allow. I'm usually an optimist when it comes to this stuff, so I'm sure that once the series starts delving into Orihime and Mu, things will shape up.
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' I don't care if the buzz isn't real- I can roleplay being drunk!'

- Balmung, .hack vol. 1

I now have a site! Web page rather: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1048042/

[TheWebbuilder]

And it falls to me to be the pessimest.

To be honest, I'm not going to watch each and every episode of Tribe. It just doesn't draw me in enough for me to continue watching it, although I'll probably drift in and out of the series for the next month or two... At this point, I'm only hanging around the Mega/RockMan fandom because of a few group projects and RPs I'm working on.

Once those are done, well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it...

I'll definately pick up SF2 when it's released. But the anime? I don't really know if I'm going to continue or not. It's track record just hasn't been so hot.
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[Rock Miyabi]

Hardly worth even posting this, since there weren't many pans. But here they are:



And since I was too sick to join in the discussion earlier, I guess all I have to add is that yes, the episode was a little boring. Jackie has a weak design and I really had no respect for him. The art was pretty bland other than a few select scenes, but Gori was at least drawn well again. I loved Cancer's shuriken flinging against the boulder, though.
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Avatar art thanks to toberboobap, animated gif thanks to Dr. Wily II

[Miyabi on DA] [Ryuusei Pans all in one thread!](Last Updated on 4/6, TRIBE COMPLETE!)