Introduction
Baldr Force EXE can be considered a mini series or a long movie since it is only four episodes long. While it wasn't perfect, I did enjoy watching it. It finished airing on the 4th of April 2007 and at the time of writing this, it is January of 2008, I wouldn't say the aspect of a long series release would be coming soon. Though it did took them nearly five months just to finish airing the four episdoes so you never know.
You can categorize this anime into the action, science fiction and mecha genre. It is sort of like a union of the .hack series and the Gundam series.
Review
Story
The story is like a combination of ./hack and Gundam as in takes place in a virtual world where humans fight in mobile suits. It is a new age where virtual reality is at its height where the virtual world is not different than the reality world (in some people minds, it is even better). If you die in there, then you'll end up dying in the real world.
But great technological advances comes with greater ambitions. There are those that wants to this new technology to create their ideal world (and as we all know, it is only ideal for them but not for anyone else). Fortunately for mankind, when there is evil doers, there are also those who seek to protect.
While the human race continues to practically live in the virtual world, there must be a force to protect these innocent people and that is your army also known as FLAK. They are the central government and their only objective is to keep the virtual world safe from terrorist groups and the like. With the help of a private enterprise known as VSS, for the most part, they are able to keep this stability.
But when people are starting to disappear mysteriously, one has to wonder what is causing such as scenario. The best most people can come up with is of some ghost causing all of these. But when things are going bad, it never just stops there. Hackers from various terrorist groups, most notably those belonging to Fei Dao will continue to do their damage. Even our protagonist was part of a hacker group. Unfortunately for him though, his team was caught and their leader killed during the fight.
Despite all of this, he agrees to join up with FLAK in their fight to protect the virtual world but his only reason for doing so was to find out the person that killed his leader. But in the midst of his quest, he is confronted with another issue, a mysterious girl who seems to have the ability to teleport herself anywhere in the virtual world, appears in his.
Exactly who is this mysterious girl and is there any connection between her and the disappearing people? And is he able to find out who the killer of his much adored leader? What about the hackers and their terrorist groups? Maybe they are now having seconds thoughts of ever creating this virtual world.
Characters
This anime is only four episode long so I didn't expect much character development and that is exactly what happened. You do end up knowing the story of the protagonist as the anime progresses but that is that. None of the other characters are really built. However, since all of the characters belong to a certain type that is common in other animes, you can pretty much figure out their personalities right away.
The fact that we have seen this before kind of disappointed me because I would prefer to see something new. I don't mind seeing reuse of character type from one anime to another but at least make an effort to add some extra spice to it or something. Being able to predict beforehand anything ruins the fun of watching an anime but I can pretty much predict how each character is going to behave for the rest of the anime after just seeing them for five minutes or less.
However, the worst part has to be the fact that the cast is very large. It doesn't matter how you tweak the math, it just doesn't give time for the character to be, well, characterize.
Animation
Some scenes are a little darker than I liked but overall, it was well animated. The background of the prairie in the virtual world was just stunning. The fight scenes were okay but nothing beyond my expectations. The characters as well as their mobile suit in the virtual world was well drawn. You actually see some different faces unlike other animes where a certain character looks so similar to another character (be it in the same anime or a different one). Now, that can come from the fact that I haven't seen enough animes with characters with similar design but for now, I like that it is different.
Sound
There isn't much to talk about with the sound. Both the opening and ending theme was good but the background music was only okay. However, being short as it is, you don't really expect to hear a lot of different background music now do you?
Conclusion
Baldr Force EXE was good and I would recommend it to others. It does contain a lot of graphic scenes and even rape so only adults or those in their late teens should be watching this. It is short so you don't have to comit time to it which is a nice thing to have when you have so liitle free time like me. Just sit back and enjoy the show.
Download
Unfortunately, I could not find many things to download for this anime. The only thing I found that was worthwhile was the opening theme in its instrumental version.