Babel nisei

Normally, one likes to promote 80s and 90s anime to help educate fans who think that the genre started with Dragon Ball Z, but no new fan can be faulted for giving this series a miss. There is pretty girl to get things going, of course, but she is dull and lifeless and a rather poor motivation for any of the action that comes next. The main character, typically, is an ordinary high school kid who finds himself in the middle of an improbable adventure and privy to the existence of secret societies and hidden worlds, but they are all rather routine and unexciting. The action animation is not very well executed - too many speed lines and still images in fight scenes for my liking and nothing about the secret worlds we visit is particularly memorable. This for me is the series key weakness: every good fantasy has some kind of catchy hook, much like a good pop song, that makes you want to re-visit it once it's over. This one does not. I saw it once and have no interest in watching it ever again. Avoid.