Level E 04 – Into the darkness

Yet another episode that I used the episode title, anyways, Prince will not make his appearance, instead we have four guys who some chick being eaten by their fellow student and decides to ask help to some hippie who referred to them on some Level E course in some shabby clinic that is beside a strip club!

Even though this episode focuses more on the story about those four guys who are scared because they witness an alien eating their student, we still have the same opening sequence. Could this be that the Prince is trolling us again? Anyways, one thing that I noticed about this episode is that the drawings are a bit “dirty” some might say rough, but the roughness of art added depth to the dark storyline that we are having right now.

Since the four guys are some generic group of punks, I will skip them and go to the aliens in this episode, the Conwell race, a race of aliens that eats their women for them to bear a child and this episode focuses on the urges of one Conwell. About it, I love the issue of self-control!

If I would place it in the real world side of things, you might interpret it as “doing that deed" and that the man can’t resist doing it with the girl he likes because his body can’t take it anymore and wants to do it. In this case, he likes the girl but he doesn’t want to eat but he must because it is part of his nature as an alien.

This is one aspect of Togashi-sensei that I might say he is a genius. If you lay it down, here is how it goes. He likes the girl but still wants to see her everyday but wants to eat her because that is how they express their “love” with the girl but he want to see her but he must eat her to express his love for her. See what I mean? This sort of tragedy keeps me glued watching this episode.

Overall, the art, the darkness of the story and the good balance between comedy and drama in this episode makes this episode stand out from the rest of the other episodes and you can watch this episode even with no background knowledge about the first three episodes of the show.

Like what the previous episode noted about the Prince’s writing skills, yep, it turned out that this is one of Prince’s schemes, I mean, projects for the sake of humans understanding the aliens surrounding them…, which surprised me in the end and caused me to pull the same expression I had back at the climax of the previous episode! And since this story never worked for a video game company named, Zega since it is too dark, the Prince’s next plan is to create five kids who have strong sense of justice and will wear colorful costumes!

Yup, the next episode is yet another Super Sentai parody! Seriously, what’s with Japan and the amount of tokusatsu references these days?! Just earlier, I made a Bakuman review and mentioned about Niizuma doing Rider 1’s henshin pose, now this?! This is indeed, the year of Kamen Rider and Super Sentai!

Level E 04 – Into the darkness

Yet another episode that I used the episode title, anyways, Prince will not make his appearance, instead we have four guys who some chick being eaten by their fellow student and decides to ask help to some hippie who referred to them on some Level E course in some shabby clinic that is beside a strip club!

Even though this episode focuses more on the story about those four guys who are scared because they witness an alien eating their student, we still have the same opening sequence. Could this be that the Prince is trolling us again? Anyways, one thing that I noticed about this episode is that the drawings are a bit “dirty” some might say rough, but the roughness of art added depth to the dark storyline that we are having right now.

Since the four guys are some generic group of punks, I will skip them and go to the aliens in this episode, the Conwell race, a race of aliens that eats their women for them to bear a child and this episode focuses on the urges of one Conwell. About it, I love the issue of self-control!

If I would place it in the real world side of things, you might interpret it as “doing that deed" and that the man can’t resist doing it with the girl he likes because his body can’t take it anymore and wants to do it. In this case, he likes the girl but he doesn’t want to eat but he must because it is part of his nature as an alien. 

This is one aspect of Togashi-sensei that I might say he is a genius. If you lay it down, here is how it goes. He likes the girl but still wants to see her everyday but wants to eat her because that is how they express their “love” with the girl but he want to see her but he must eat her to express his love for her. See what I mean? This sort of tragedy keeps me glued watching this episode.

Overall, the art, the darkness of the story and the good balance between comedy and drama in this episode makes this episode stand out from the rest of the other episodes and you can watch this episode even with no background knowledge about the first three episodes of the show.

Like what the previous episode noted about the Prince’s writing skills, yep, it turned out that this is one of Prince’s schemes, I mean, projects for the sake of humans understanding the aliens surrounding them…, which surprised me in the end and caused me to pull the same expression I had back at the climax of the previous episode! And since this story never worked for a video game company named, Zega since it is too dark, the Prince’s next plan is to create five kids who have strong sense of justice and will wear colorful costumes!

Yup, the next episode is yet another Super Sentai parody! Seriously, what’s with Japan and the amount of tokusatsu references these days?! Just earlier, I made a Bakuman review and mentioned about Niizuma doing Rider 1’s henshin pose, now this?! This is indeed, the year of Kamen Rider and Super Sentai!

Level E 03 – Risky Game… NOT!

The whole episode in one picture. Yeah I got trolled.

Finally, two episodes worth of prince madness has finally come to its end… with a bang! Not actually a bang but just a sight of the Prince being chased by lasers and Miho playing a RPG with Yukitaka being tanned! Anyways, here is the third episode and if you are wondering why I retained the episode name with “not” at the end, just read the review and be prepared to be trolled!

The third episode has the mix between weird and fun at the same time. Weird because we never noticed that the Prince is responsible with everything that is happening… we haven’t got a clue! And fun because we don’t know that he is responsible for everything that is happening!

The revelation at the near end of the episode caused me to either laugh my ass out that I was trolled by a Prince or scratch my head say to myself, “Is this a work made by Togashi-sensei? If it is, he must be taking something that he decided to troll us at the end.” And because of that, all I can say is, he is indeed a genius, now finish Hunter x Hunter once you are out of your hiatus!

This episode, aside from Prince trolling us at the end, we learned the reason why Captain Craft hates the Prince and happy to beat the hell out of him if given the chance. It is because of contradicting the Prince back then and ends up being part of one of his experiments! Anyways, the sight of Craft beating the Prince while smiling still cracks me up… along with the subtitles found in Prince’s video!

As for the Prince in this episode, well, I seriously love his attitude more and how he acted when he learned that everybody knows his plan/experiment/method of trolling/whatever you like to call it. I hope I will see more of him in the near future even if it was seen at the preview (on the right) that we will not see the him… or is it?

Left: Where are the lasers?! Right: And I thought it is only Japan who is addicted to baseball! Aliens too!

Overall, comparing it to the other episodes, this must be what I can say, one of the best-structured episode in terms of comedy. Why? It is because what they did here is that they pull some minor laughs at the early part of the episode, went to a short halt when the Disckonians attacked and throw in the punch line at the end with the humor slowly subsides after the laser chase!

Or is it?

As for the plot, it properly closes the things that were established in the previous episodes properly. While writing this review, this is when I realize, why the Prince ended up landing on Earth and on some other planet? It turns out it is all part of his plan!

Level E 02 – Wait. He IS a Prince?!

The Prince knows what you did thar.

… And I thought his name is Clive! It turned out to be the name of his pet! Anyways, more aliens came to Earth just for this blonde troublemaker, which turned out to be a prince with an important task with the safety of the entire galaxy! Anyways, here is the second episode of Level E!

In this episode, we are introduced to the Prince’s bodyguards, Colin, Sade and a man that looks like Tseng of FFVII only referred as the Captain. First impressions with these guys? Captain is one heck of a captain! Even if he hates the Prince so much (so much that he is willing to leave the prince on Earth!), he must force to Prince to grab him and send him in their spaceship for the sake of the galaxy! As for the other two… meh.

This is what happened to the guy that the Prince beat the hell out.

As for the Prince, his eccentricity in the previous episode is only a sample on what he will offer to us in this episode. I mean, he beat the crap out of that guy thinking that he is just injured to badly! Also, the fact that he pulled quite a poker face at the beginning of the episode just sealed the deal for me about his personality.

In this episode, we were able to take a glimpse of Yukitaka’s punkish personality which reminded me a little of Yusuke from Yu Yu Hakusho accept he is a little tamer compared to that guy… which gives me an impression that he is just a watered down version of Yusuke. Aside from that, Miho is starting to become an interesting character.

As for the introduction of more aliens asides from the bodyguard, to be exact the hot headed and territorial Disckonians caused my theory about seeing more aliens in the future quite likely to happen. Add the fact that the Prince actually beat up one of them! And so, I am expecting to see fights coming from the Prince’s group and the Disckonians.

Overall, the episode is more of an extension of the previous one, in which they established more facts about the Prince and his background and why the devil he might end up crash landing on Earth. As for the new characters, the Captain stood out for me, especially his personality about not caring less about the Prince and is forcefully doing his job for the sake of saving the galaxy.

Level E 01 – DEATH: An alien on the planet Review

With Hunter x Hunter on a hiatus, I guess it is time for us to watch Togashi-sensei’s underrated title, Level E and this time, he decided to go back into his supernatural roots and instead of demons coming from the other side, we have aliens! Yep, and this alien is blonde!

The first episode was one fun episode to watch. Asides that he threw a couple of visual references such as one character appearing in the beginning kinda look like Gon from Hunter x Hunter, E.T.’s infamous two fingers connecting and the fact that the guy heading the engineering department is named Edogawa Ranzo (Edogawa Ranpo) and that he is living in Conan (Edogawa? Conan? Conan Edogawa! Get it? Get it? Nevermind) will make you laugh.

As for the plot, it is about Tsutsui Yukitaka who has just moved in a different neighborhood because of baseball and to his surprise, a longhaired blonde person has just unpacked his things and decided to stay and drink coffee! Turned out to be he is an alien, only known as the Prince because that is what it is said at the end of the episode that came from the planet, Jacqueline Ess and now he is on Earth because this is were his spaceship landed! At the fact that Prince here is a little simple minded with mimicry abilities and the ability to regenerate!

The plot is not your average supernatural anime plot simply because it was established earlier that aliens exist and some are hiding somewhere in this planet, in short, we might see more aliens in the future episodes. Second, Prince here is unlike most aliens in anime that I saw doesn’t want to invade Earth but he just wants to know his true self. If it turns out that Prince’s true self involves him invading Earth, then we just have a very predictable plot twist!

Prince = Awesome.

First impression on our duo: Yukitaka basically is that new guy who just came in town and ends up finding a weird guy wearing his clothes. Yeah, he is that plain as for the one breaking in his house, Prince he is one heck of an alien! Seriously, I love how he thinks that Yukitaka has the makings of a great psychopathic killer due to the fact he never mentioned to the girl next door that he is the one who pressed the self destruct button! See how simple he is! Plus, he carried the entire episode, no, he is everywhere in this episode! If I would place Yu Yu Hakusho/Ghost Fighter references with this Togashi title, you might say that Yukitaka is the cross between Yusuke/Eugene and part of Kurama/Dennis’ personality while as for Prince, he is like the cross between Kuwabara/Alfred’s comical side, Kurama’s hair except that he is blonde and a part of Hiei/Vincent’s mysterious personality.

Overall, this is one fun first episode. The Prince here like I said earlier carried the entire first episode that it even overshadowed Yukitaka who is supposed to be our main protagonist! The comedy is over the top with some references from other works and Prince’s simple-mindedness in terms of how Yukitaka acts with other people. As for the plot, it has some similarities with Togashi-sensei’s other works and I am sure, his fans will feel at home with this title. If this is your first Togashi title, then you will start watching or reading more of his titles.