UEKI NO HOUSOKU

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA ActionUeki no Housoku

REVIEWS

• 

  VClyfe

  80/100
  Recycled tropes, effective execution.

  Shounen.

  Shounen has changed.

  Ever since the time Kosuke Ueki made his debut on the big screen in 2005, there have been plenty of great shounen series that made their appearance and became a part of the shounen hall of fame. Most of those, including stuff like FMAB, HxH, Assassination Classroom, stand up pretty well in 2020. But does that hold true for The Law of Ueki as well? Readon to find out!

  Video Review can be found here:

  Premise & Story:
  The story revolves around the life of Kosuke Ueki who is given the weird but creative power to turn trash into trees by his teacher, Mr. Kobayashi. Mr. K (Kobayashi) is his "God Candidate" - a sponsor of sorts. Ueki, with the power that he has, has to now compete against other high school kids who were similarly granted these powers by their god candidates in a large-scale battle to win both the "Blank Talent" - basically a wish-granting thing, and the promotion of Mr. K to the title of being God Almighty. If you boil it down, it is basically a big-ass tournament arc where the future of the world will be decided by the winner. And obviously, since supernatural powers are involved, harming the civvies is a no go!

  All the characters in this show start off with a pre-defined number of talents that they possess - the talent to study, the talent to run, the talent to be liked by girls and so on. You use your power you got as a "candidate" on normal humans, you lose one of your talents. You lose all your talents and you go poof. You will no longer exist. Ueki, being the protagonist, starts the battle on an automatic disadvantage compared to the other candidates - most of them start off with 200 talents while Ueki, with his liberal use of "celestial powers" on regular humans for absolutely the most well-meaning reasons, starts off with around 10. Stakes, stakes. Its all about the high stakes here.

  Now, if you notice all the candidates are high school students. It sound silly as hell - this entire business of letting high school students basically call the shots - but the show is super self-aware and absolutely addresses it at some point in the future. But yeah, that's enough about the story, let's talk characters.

  Characters:
  Kosuke Ueki. He's a selfless lovable goofball who only cares primarily about two things in life - one, to always be there for his nakama and 2, to always hold up his sense of justice. Of course, while he IS the focus, there are other characters in this show too. He eventually runs into other characters who basically become his "nakama". Among them, the most prominent one is Ai Mori - a character who I found to be particularly annoying initially because of her high pitched voice and tons of jokes that just didn't seem to land. But as the show progressed, I just found myself warming up to her. I liked her character more and more as the show went on and even the jokes started being funny. The other characters aren't as prominent as her, and just talking about them would kind of fall into the spoiler territory so I think I'll refrain from discussing them. But they get their moments in spotlight for sure - they're not the most fleshed out characters ever, but they're decent enough and do the job. The one that's the most fleshed out, of course, is Ueki himself. And it all basically ties into the extremely abnormal sense of justice that he holds.

  The reason behind his abnormally strong sense of justice is something that isn't exactly addressed in the initial 5 or 6 episodes of the show and that may make him seem like an uninteresting cardboard cutout of a character, but rest assured that the show eventually reveals it to you and it just ends up tying a lot of loose ends in your head.

  Strong Writing and Tendency to catch the viewer off guard:
  I'd even go as far as to say that that's kind of a general theme with this series. You'll have questions as you watch, you'll think "Hah, I bet the writer forgets about this!" and then you watch the episodes go by smugly thinking how correct you were. Only for the writer to pull a "HAH, you thought bitch!" on you and they bring back a loose end and tie into a latter part of the story just for everything to make sense. THAT, in my opinion, is where the show truly shines. It has the tendency to catch you off guard and surprise you in ways you wouldn't normally think it would be able to. And it does that over, and over and over again.

  The fact that the show is able to explain most, if not all of your questions, by the time the credits roll is a testament to its solid writing.

  Minor Issues:
  Solid writing notwithstanding, nothing can take away from the fact that the plot threads that get introduced feel slightly forced at times - especially when new power systems get introduced out of the blue or when stuff just conveniently happens to work in the favor of our protagonists. There's also the typical anime issue of the series completely doing away with any "blood" (well, 99% of the time anyway) in order to adhere to the genre conventions and not make it too overly dark but that negatively impacts immersion to a degree in my opinion. And then there's the comedy - which, as I've already mentioned when I talked about Ai Mori - is pretty hit and miss initially.

  Final Words:
  Other than that, there's not much here that I can nitpick and complain about. It has solid art and animation throughout the entirety of its run, the openings are absolute bangers - they're literally some of my favorite Openings in anime as a medium - and the soundtrack works well in general. Add to that package a solid story that wraps up nicely in its run and decently written characters and you've got an anime that I'd definitely recommend. The Law of Ueki, on my personal scale, is a strong 8 out of 10. If you are in the mood for some classic shounen action, definitely do give this one a go!

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• 

  Parker404

  80/100
  Anime where characters shine most.

  

  __Warning: SPOILERS__

  Initially I watched this show in dub and I can say it definitely hindered my enjoyment and immersion in this show. None of the voice acting was that great and the monologuing was almost unbearable. If you ever try to watch this please do it in the sub.

  Plot: This anime is essentially one giant tournament arc, and the power system compliments it surprisingly well. The powers, as bizarre as they are, keep you entertained with the unique ways some of the characters use them. The main issue with it I had though was how they kept adding different parts to it seemingly randomly to help Ueki grow stronger. These different parts being the sacred weapons and the level 2 sort of just appear randomly with no foreshadowing or mentioning whatsoever.

  Characters: This category is the primary factor to why I enjoyed this anime so much. Although at the beginning there’s nothing great about the characters. Ai was just an annoying girl who screamed and Ueki was just… boring. After Ueki got squashed by Robert in around episode 7 was where the shine of this anime first started surfacing. We got to see the first glimpse of Ueki’s sense of righteousness that he embodies. Mr. K’s influence from his righteous act of saving Ueki really hit him to allow for the start of his development and character progression. Ueki is a great main character that encapsulates the themes of the show marvelously. Righteousness is the main theme presented in this show, and Ueki perfectly embodies it. As Mr. K says, "I can't tolerate people who fall below my own standard of righteousness. I've observed a lot of people since I first came here, but none of them possess the righteousness I was seeking. I was beginning to lose interest in this realm... thinking of going back to the Celestial world. Then I met him... Ueki possesses the sense of decency that I discovered was extremely rare in this world... And his righteousness was true." In Ueki's battle with Onimon,(Ep.8) he shuns Onimon for having to rely on the talent of blank to protect his village, Onimon replies, asking what he would do with it. Ueki doesn't know and hasn't thought about it, "Then why are you in these battles in the first place?" Ueki says "To protect the talent of blank from evil... That's what Mr. K wanted... That's our righteousness." He is only doing it out of his righteousness, because that's just what he represents. Over the course of the show his righteousness only grows with the rest of the cast. All of the main cast get a decent amount of depth and development. Even the antagonists like Robert and Hanon effectively serve their narrative and thematic purposes. Thematic being how righteousness is stronger than evil. The majority of the smaller antagonists also get smaller backstories to understand why they’re in this tournament in the first place and you can see the variation with each story and the dynamics of all the opposing teams are slightly different in their own ways. The only thing I think wasn’t used to its potential was Ueki and Mori’s dynamic. Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t bad, but it just wasn’t used to its potential. We don't really get to see either why Ai followed Ueki so much. No backstory to their friendship, nothing. I really think that Ai was the weakest in the main cast despite having the 2nd most screen time. At the end of the show they did add on it a bit by displaying the trust she had for Ueki but they could’ve definitely capitalized off of it more.

  Music/animation: Let’s start with the animation first. This anime was released in 2005 so you do see the black bars on the sides, but the animation wasn’t bad. You can easily see what’s going on at all times, and I never had any issues watching it at all. There wasn’t a moment where it looked clunky either it showed what it needed and that’s it. With this entire anime being a tournament arc you’d expect the fights to be dull since this anime is relatively old but it’s actually the opposite. The fights are always thrilling to watch. The climaxes of Ueki's fights are always exciting because he barely ever wins off of sheer brute force. Ueki uses his powers very smartly to win and winning by simply outsmarting the opponent adds to the thrill of the fight. It's not even just Ueki, Sano and Rinko had some great fights where they only won through smarts. Even with this anime releasing around 2005 with not the greatest graphics it still holds up today because it's still easy to tell what's going on, the unpredictability of the fights and the music is still great when it plays at the end of a fight. The soundtracks are great and always adds to the fight scenes and emotional moments.

  Inconsistencies: While I do love this anime, there have been a select few parts that either don’t make sense or just don’t work out. For one, the jokes. This one only applies to the start of the series because the jokes were too heavily reliant on the cringe factor of them and they weren’t funny at all. The most prominent one I’m thinking of was when Ueki was on the subway and he was just randomly dancing because he heard music and his body just couldn’t stop because he had “the power to dance.”
  The second inconsistency I spotted was a bit more of a problem that ate away at me. That was when Ueki fought Robert for the 2nd time he said that his “Level 2” was being able to use multiple sacred weapons at once. But many episodes later he said that he never unlocked his level 2, and that he really needed to keep training for it. Despite that, I can’t think of any more besides just those 2.

  Overall:
  This anime is character based, and doesn’t take itself too seriously, and with that I love it. The themes are executed well through multiple characters and dynamics.

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