Anime: Ueki no Housoku

Animated by studio DEEN, which means you know it’s going to suck. The production values are plain mediocre for their time. The soundtrack is pop stuff I never care about and the animation is stiffy, all means to save money with frozen characters and moving mouths only. Voice acting is ok, although the constant emoness of the opponents and the morality monologues of the protagonist were getting to my nerves all the time. Directed by Watanabe Hiroshi, who has done nothing but forgettable mediocrities, such as Orphen, Star Ocean, King of Bandits Jing, and Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok. He also did a season of Slayers but even that famous retro means very little today.

The problem with this anime is the same with most of its kind. It’s too basic for a shounen despite handling its premise very well and it definitely did not deserve two full seasons. There isn’t any mystery or much of hidden motives in it, so it gets repetitive and predictable early on.

Ueki as a protagonist is your archetypical shounen hero; you can replace him with any other shounen protagonist and you won’t even tell the difference. He is stupid, impolite, rushes towards trouble driven by his ideals, and has a million times more stamina points than anyone else in the show. As cool as it felt for a few episodes, you eventually see that this is all there is about him, he doesn’t develop beyond that, nor questions his morality, and being stuck on a mindset all the way is exactly what makes him boring in the longrun. His unshaken beliefs in justice and trust are so unbelievably extreme to the point you just can’t take them seriously. No matter the situation, his resolve is helping those who are weak against the unjust. I mean it’s ok to have all that in a show aimed at 6 year olds but it becomes pointless if all the backing up he has for his ideals are his broken powers and infinite durability. Thank you very much; I could win all the time like that too and I could be as bad as I want simply because nobody can beat me. I am sure it is very important to teach little children such values but it sure never tries to make it appear as anything more than ownage through power.

Even if one can see past that and try to like the show for the cheesefest it is, it’s still very hard to do so with the hero’s laughable superpower. He can transform garbage to trees! How lame! He passes like some sort of agent for political-correct tree-hugging propaganda. And as we all know shows that try to be too political-correct suck ass since the only anime that are worth your time are those doing the exact opposite.

So because this is a shitty morality brainwasher show, the story can be described in a few lines. The whole plot is just Ueki trying to win a fighting tournament and becoming a celestial god that will affect the entire world. His opponents are other kids with superpowers, most of which are emo because of something cruel that has happened in their life. So you can imagine how the deal goes; he keeps shoveling monologues around “justice is very important” or “friendship is unbeatable” or “protect and love Mother Nature”. Yes, very sweet and innocent. AND GODDAMN LAME if you are no longer 6 years old. I knew right away that if his morality speeches won’t get his opponents, then a big punch to the face will. And it’s not like the villains can hope to win since his hit points are endless. Thank you very much for the boredfest; there is no actual character development here.

Again, I am not saying the premise is bad or the protagonist is not handled well. It’s just that it is very simplistic to the point it becomes predictable and repetitive in just a few episodes. It never tries to be anything more than what your first impression of it will be, it never questions its premise just to spice things up, it never flavors the setting or the characters with something other than a new set of clothes and some extra attack every 20 episodes. No plot twists, expected shounen formula, it all gets dull fast enough. As much as I dislike a shounen like Naruto, I admit that it has a variety of themes, many memorable and interesting characters, and a world that is constantly enriched and mysterious. Well you don’t get all that in Ueki; it is simplistic and stereotypical. There aren’t even any other characters besides Ueki to pay notice to. Seriously, why is the lead girl following him around? She is always there nagging and complaining and doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING USEFUL! GIRLS IN SHOUNEN ARE USELESS!

Hell, the whole show is useless. It ends and you feel like the hero didn’t get any reward for saving the world. Where is this celestial godhood they were talking about the whole time that would reshape reality? He just returned to his boring school life without anyone even caring about saving the world from emo kids. YOU CALL THAT AN ENDING? Where is the catharsis? What was the point of all that? Friendship is magic? Go buy a pony.

As far as action goes, the show is very good if all you want is superpowers. Each fighter has really crazy abilities and uses them in comical or wowing ways that cause mass destruction. Of course there isn’t any real strategy here, since Ueki is the winner simply for being the protagonist. And surely, seeing him grabbing garbage and turning them to trees in an instant can grow boring very fast. Sure, later on he learns more special attacks yet the whole thing by then looks closer to a circus rather a serious battle for the future of the world. Skip that, just like in Naruto they are explaining to the enemy how their power works, a thing which results to mostly talking rather than fighting.

As far as comedy goes, the show has some tired immature jokes centered on slapstick or misunderstandings. Nothing too bold or that different than the average shounen out there. In terms of drama, it always has to do with 10 year old kids whose brother is mean or whose boss is evil before Ueki kicks their sorry asses and makes them his lapdogs or they plain disappear from the story. Very ephemeral and overall forgettable stuff.

So let me sum it up. Ueki is a completely forgettable shounen show; not because it is not directed properly but because it plays out too simple and safe. There are lots of other shows with far more exciting stories, plot twists, political incorrect characters, heck even in terms of fan service Ueki plain lacks. It is plain steamed rice without any seasoning and for that you will most likely be bored and drop it for One Piece or Fairy Tail. Plus it’s made by DEEN. Not recommended.

And now for some excused scorings.
[/spoiler]

After just finishing watching the DVD version of Law of Ueki, I had mixed thoughts about this anime because The Law of Ueki had its moments, but I think this series had more faults than good qualities.

Good Points
-------------------
1) I liked the whole tournament style anime, were upon victory of a fight, you progress further and further and the fights get bigger and better
2) Decent amounts of comedy. I really do enjoy fighting style animes that have comedy... though I wouldnt have mind some ecchi thrown in here and there.
3) Music was not bad, it certainly did not harm the series in my view.
4) I really liked the fact that even though this was mainly fighting, there was a twist to the fighting... like using powers and coming up with strategies, as opposed to just running in and hope for the best.

Bad Points
-----------------
1) This series is way to damn long... 51 episodes... come on, this could have been done in 26 episodes. I felt this series was drawn out way too much because of the length of the series, it felt like the writers were to focused on the length of the series as opposed to the quality of the show.
2) Strategy revelations. Every battle had fight 1 minute and then lets stop the fight pull up some chairs and get some popcorn because were gonna reveal our strategy to the enemy for every damn battle in this series. I'm not joking about this part, because if you look back on this series, there is more "here, let me explain to you what I just did", that actual fighting.
3) Though the characters weren't much to be critical about, I thought Ai (the green hair girl) was so freaken annoying. First of all, she has a crush on Ueki and deems it fit that she spend every moment with Ueki. Ai was always asking, "why this" and "why that". And then in fights, when its just Ueki and the enemy, who do you think comes out of the blue? Of course its Ai the battle ruiner. She did have some purpose in this series, but in general she was so damn annoying and every time I saw her I would usually let out a long drawn out sigh.

-----------------------------------------------------
Overall, I consider this a MILDLY RECOMMENDATION b/c this series did have its moments, but the fact that its so long, something that could have easily been complete in at least 26 episodes makes me wonder why something that could have been completed in 26 episodes needed 51 episodes?

So my bottom word is... unless you can get a hold of the DVD version of this series, don't bother getting it, b/c I couldnt imagine having to read the subtitles to all that strategy revelation and long length of a series.

I won't be as nearly as thorough as Gambit was, however, I really liked this show a lot. Here is why:

Regardless of the fact that Ueki is able to turn trash into trees, I do not feel the ecology message here. The message that practically screams at me, instead, is: "Always take care of your friends, as they are the only true asset a person can have." and a sub-message of: "Always try your hardest as you never know what will happen unless you try." As such, I whole-heartedly agree with the messages presented in this series.

As for the animation, story and sound, although it is clearly geared for children, they weren't necessarily bad. I would put them at the same level as say pokemon or similar. Chibi at it's best!

The characters were all well developed and just about each had their own "sad" back story and reasoning for wanting the end prize. I was most moved, however, by Ueki himself with his sense of self-righteousness and justice. I was also impressed by his relentlessness of spirit in that he would always find a way to persevere even though he took a lot of punishment before finally achieving victory.

Another interesting concept in this series was the fact that when "power users" turned their powers against a "non-power user" they would lose a talent. The only way to regain talents is to defeat another "power user" in battle and thusly removing the celestial abilities from the loser. Should a contestant lose all of their talents, they will disappear as though they had never existed.

Overall, I would highly recommend this anime to anyone, especially those with children. It is a family oriented show and one of the better shows of this variety that I have seen in a long time. I felt the need to marathon this series as I could not stop watching it. I hope you find it as interesting as I did!

Perfect to watch while eating dinner.

I kind of feel sorry for the rating since it doesn't really deserve a bashing. It is a very enjoyable anime, but the aspects we can point out are so much substandard that I cannot give any higher. So don't feel like this is a really bad show, because it isn't.

Nobody takes this series seriously.
Ueki no Housoku is a very odd kind of series. It has bad animation, is horribly predictable, has lousy characters and silly comedy, but as long as you don't take it too serious, you can still enjoy it. That's probably the strength of the series, that it doesn't take anything seriously. Not its characters and certainly not the morale it tries to tell. I mean, it's about a guy who can change garbage into trees, that already smells like an ecology-morale - and yeah, although you can smell that in this series, you can also see that they just use it because it is fun to make that character do silly things, not because they had a really cheesy ecology-theme in mind.

No pretentions
This show doesn't have any pretentions about being a good shounen-series, or to have the best fights in a series. They just wanted to make a fun show where people can enjoy watching while not having to cope with an overly complicated story and with lots of silly comedy. Don't pretend this is a good show, because it definitely isn't. It is an enjoyable show, nothing more.
Good, now that we have that out of the way, let's go a bit more indepth.

Animation[/u]: Quite bad animation.

All anime have some reused frames, but this series uses them a bit too often during fights. Even the backgrounds sometimes look a bit washed-out, as if there wasn't enough time to properly color/draw them. Every now and then there are scenes which are supposed to create a mood by using only a few colors as a background, but they don't really work out; they just look cheap. And that's the main thing I feel when I watch this series: that the animation looks utterly cheap.
Even the OP/ED look cheap, especially the last OP, with the overusage of bright colors and especially the misplaced colored credits.
They do have some CG in this series, but because it is used in a flashy way, instead of subtly, you cannot possibly look around it (like the grid-power). To me, it was quite disturbing since it didn't really fit in.

The rating for animation I gave it may sound a bit low due to the animation not being really bad, but it is just extremely poor. And although you can camouflage a lack of budget, you cannot camouflage a lack of quality or even a lack of intention to make any good of it.

Sound[/u]: Cheap BGM.

Just like the animation, the sound also emits the feeling of a cheapskate director. If you hear the OP and the ED-songs, you'll realize those are extremely low-budget songs which are made without any feeling in it. The same goes for the BGM, which sounds cheesy all along the series if they aren't reusing the same song over and over in a slightly different variant.
The voiceactors do at least a decent job and even some characters (Mari, anyone?) have a disturbingly annoying voiceactor. So far I haven't really heard a good one and the voices don't suit the characters in the beginning, but gradually you get used to them, just like in Hikaru no Go and then you cannot understand how others say the voiceactors were not so good. It grows on you.

Story[/u]: No need to keep your attention with the show.

Is that a bad thing? Actually, it isn't. The series is so laid-back and easygoing that it doesn't really matter if you miss out on a few minutes, or a dialogue. It's pretty transparant and although that's usually a bad thing for series, it actually is Ueki's forte. Just because the series is so easygoing and doesn't bother too much with the actual story (most of the series it's centered around the fights anyway) it doesn't matter. There is a nice summary at the beginning of every episode, so even if you missed one, you can catch up with it this way.
The story feels as if someone came up with an idea and every now and then that same person gets a new idea and then makes a new arc instead of having prepared it beforehand. Sometimes the story feels a bit random because of that, but in the end everything gets back together without having lost any real connections. Then again, there are not really many connections to make ;)

Fights
As said before, the series is usually centered around the fights. There are several sort of fights, but they're mostly silly -yet creative- and although sometimes there is something really nasty at stake, there are never any really disturbing scenes. The fights usually take 1 episode each, until later in the series when the fights get bigger and better and sometimes need to be spread over several episodes (usually only 2, though, mostly due to the fact that the fight starts near the end of the first episode). If you tune in halfway, you don't need an entire recap episode to understand what happened and aside of the general overview, you don't need more info about why that-and-that person are fighting.
You can say what you want about the fights, but the idea behind it is interesting and the side-effects of fighting/winning/losing as well. The places/people they fight are usually pretty funny or at least seriously creative, although there are also a lot of them who are just plain silly.
Of course there are cliffhangers, but none which make you crave for the next episode.

Characters[/u]: Really a lot, but also too many silly characters.

I would like to praise this series for having so many characters, and so many different powers they came up with. I would also want to point out that lots of those characters are really silly. Either because of their character or because of their powers. Ueki is the first one to mention; he really is one of the silliest characters in this series, but he is decently funny because of that. It is a very accessible sort of silliness, so both children as adults can understand - and most probably appreciate - it.
The drawback of so many characters is that none of them really gets truly interesting. You may all smell a bit at every character who comes into play, but other than a few little flashbacks and some dialogue they are mostly pretty flat. Seeing this series is not especially targeted at a mature audience, I think they did so in order to keep the series easily accessible, but it does mean that you hardly get any way of attachment to any of the characters.

If I had to compare anything, I'd say that Ueki has some similarities to Shaman King's Yoh, but Ueki is way more serious and much more stupid. Somehow, that combination makes him pretty fun to watch.

Value[/u]: Practically none.

The animation is too bad to rewatch it for good scenes, the story is so tiny that it has no use rewatching it for that and the characters are mostly so flat that you can hardly become attached to any of them. Aside of showing it to your kids later on, I don't think there is any reason for you to even keep this around.

Enjoyment[/u]: Great show before bedtime!

How odd it may sound, I actually enjoyed this series. I watched it an hour before bedtime and then watched 2-3 episodes straight until I nodded off. You don't miss anything, so it's not a problem if you skip out on a few minutes (although I am the type of person to rewind and watch those as well) and it is such a relaxing and laidback show (even with all the fighting) that it is very easy to watch when you are not 100% focused. Because of that, this show is pretty enjoyable if you just don't take the show seriously and just watch it for plain old fun, and delete it as soon as you finish watching it.

A combonation of DBZ and FMA ill say. This a powerful anime and really get you involved into the story. When i first look into the anime i didnt think it would go anywhere. Ack a kid making trash into trees seems garbage. As I keep watching more episodes i start to discover what this anime is all about. It goes beyond the creativy and give much more. Its very original and gives something new for eveyone to enjoy. The different powers and mystery of this anime just makes you want to come back for more and more.

Animation

Animation Law of Ueki is normal a lot of detailed characters that is brought about. A lot of creativy in this anime. The character are made up original.

Sound

The sound is lovely every moment where there is sound it matches the anime moment and get you threw into the anime you just get grab into it.

Story

Story starts out slow but it immediatly gets on track of whats it is about. Ueki is a heavely being figting to get his god candiate out of hell( of which he is in hell for saving ueki :})Ueki goes threw the story getting more powerful finding out to use more sarce treasure(Kurogane, Pick, and more) later on Ueki have friends to enter a tourment in heavenly where he battle other powerusers.

Characters

OMG the characters in this anime are amazing they are compelety wierd but dont you get sick of the unorignal character you see in every anime. Law of Ueki comes out with a lot of creativy new characters with cool clothes.

Underdog anime to me but this a great anime it will be one them anime people watch later on when its all said and done. The ones people be like OMG at first i thought this was garbage but more people realize how good it is and become one of the greatest animes ever.

edit: I had to alter a few parts in the review, since the old one was based upon 25 episodes, and since I have seen the anime in its whole, I needed to change it.

While being average, this title took me by surprise. Even though everything is average, it has a lot of enjoyment packed in there, more than I could have hoped for.

Law of Ueki (or Ueki no Housoku, whichever you prefer) is your typical shounen anime. The main hero is trying to do good whenever he has the chance and wanting to defeat the bad guys who do... bad! In its whole, Law of Ueki is nothing you havent seen before. In fact, this anime reminded me of some other shounen animes out there, in particular of Shaman King, due to the nature of the skills and a bit of Flame of Recca, due to the flow of the story.

Graphically seen, Law of Ueki is about standard. Animation is well done, reused frames are there, but not much. Furthermore there is no 3D animation since it is not neccesary. Environments are colourfull and there are plenty of different environments. Characters are nicely designed to, although most of them look pretty weird (in a good way though).

I loved the sound. At least the opening and the general soundtrack, which has some nice tunes in it. The seiyuu are nice as well, not outstanding. The only voice that irritates me is that of that gall which is with Ueki (cant quite remember her name at the moment) since the first episode, since she has a screachy voice and loves to use it (unfortunately)...

Storywise there is not much to tell. It is a shounen flik, so I dont think we should expect anything to develop as well. The story in itself is simple, about powerusers that battle each other in a tournament to get the so called blank talent, a talent you can choose what it would be. Every power user is a representative for the god candidate, and I think that the one whos representative has won becomes the god. Thats about the whole story and I dont see it getting better. Then there is that which makes this an shounen anime, yes, the main "powers". In this anime there are the so called power users, people that received a gift from their god candidate. With these gifts the power users battle each other and the ones who loses loses its gift as well (meaning you can guess who will win the battle). Of course, later on Ueki develops a special gift, otherwise this wouldnt even be interesting.

Around halfway throuhg, they decide to spend some attention on the flow of the story, replacing the first badguy with a new one, and giving hell and heaven a more important role. Unfortunately, this role isnt very great, as the whole anime revolves around fighting anyway.

The characters on the other hand are another story. These characters are some of the weirdest I have seen in quite some time. Not just their designs and gifts, but their motives as well (at least, in the beginning of the anime, later on everyone seems to want to have the world). For the gifts, for example, there is someone who can change tomatoes into magma (and he is a cook of course) and there's someone who can breath lasers (and so on). Ueki himself is also quite interesting, as being one of the most easygoing characters I have seen. The first half of the anime lacks pretty much any character development, they try to make up for that by throwing in your usual "I have a sad past" characters as usually found in these types of anime. Unfortunately, this doesnt make up for the rather lacking characters, as the amount of bad guys receiving development can be counted on one hand.

While being mediocre in almost every way, Law of Ueki has caught my attention. Way better than I expected it to be (since it didnt seem like something good), Ueki is certainly a very interesting title, worth to see at least once. I dont know for sure if I will rewatch it, but normally I dont rewatch anime anyways.