Beck

Synopsis:

Koyuki Tanaka leads a boring life and he only has two friends. One, Tanabe, is your basic pervert that's been held back in the same grade for far too long and the other is a girl named Izumi Ishiguro that sees Koyuki as nothing more than a friend. On his way home from school Koyuki comes across a bizarre looking dog being teased by a bunch of kids. Even though Koyuki scares the kids away the dog turns and attacks him and with quick reflexes, he jumps up and grabs ahold of a telephone pole to keep from being bitten. Just then a young man with long hair calls the dog off in English, although Koyuki mistakes him for a foreigner he is actually Japanese and introduces himself as Ray Minami and gives his thanks. A few days later he meets Ray again and as a token of his gratitude, Ray gives Koyuki an old guitar as he explains that he is a guitarist himself as Ray's musical background starts to influence Koyuki to start playing the guitar and that there is much more out there than the typical Japanese pop singer.


Reviewer: Endosanity
Number of episodes watched: 26


Review:

Beck is sort of a coming of age story that not only revolves around one kids life changing realization but also shows everything that's involved with trying to make that dream into a reality. But the thing that makes Beck stand out is that it doesn't sugarcoat anything and that life doesn't hand you everything on a silver platter. With this Beck is not the stereo-typical anime storytelling that some are familiar with but instead a reality that some may be able to identify with, especially if you're trying to start your own band. It really does an excellent job of presenting the metal underground scene and what goes on when there's no giant stage, no multi-million dollar record company support, no popularity, but your own hard work that's going to get you where you want to go. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do even if it means dealing with all the wrong people.

The only downside with Beck is that it wastes a little too much time on things that don't affect the overall plot giving you side stories that you probably won't care about and sometimes simply dropped leaving you wonder why it was brought up to begin with. Slow and steady, Beck gets back on course with the plot but with all the side tracking the series does seems to drag on longer than it should and could have been finished up in about half the episodes.

Even though the animation is extremely bleak it actually works for the show instead of against it and the plot is a bit slow but still interesting none the less I say give this anime a try. I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. Oddly, when watching Beck, every time I saw them perform I couldn't help but think that they remind me of Rage Against the Machine... just saying is all..

Beck (Tribute AMV - Typhoon 24)

Recommendation: |Above Average|

Online viewing: Available at FAILimation's website, sort of...

Beck (subbed and dubbed)

*Note - Well, the pea-brained fucktards at FAILimation only put up like 3 episodes to watch at their website. Sure, *that'll* make you want to run out and buy this. Do yourself a favor and just rent it and if you like it that much after you've watched it then, well... the choice is yours.

Media type: DVD
From: FAILimation Undertainment
Spoken languages: English; Japanese
Subtitles: English