Aria The Scarlet Ammo: Complete Series Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.0

Aria The Scarlet Ammo: Complete Series Blu-ray Movie Review

Xerox should sue.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 26, 2012

It’s pointless to even say “stop me if you’ve heard this one before” with regard to Aria the Scarlet Ammo, because if you’ve been an anime fan for any length of time whatsoever, there’s little doubt you’ve seen not just a couple, but a whole slew, of anime that feature the same basic plot and characters that populate this series. I actually get almost depressed when I have to watch something like this that is so hackneyed, so cliché ridden and so blandly reminiscent of a huge steaming pile of other anime. Aria the Scarlet Ammo is yet another series featuring a magically powered girl who literally drops from the sky to save our clueless high school male hero. The one semi- innovation here is that the school that Kinji, our hero, attends specializes in training the kids to use firearms and other fighting methods, in order to help combat the increasing crime that is running rampant in Tokyo. This special training is called Butei, and Kinji becomes the target of a villain who is out to murder various Butei proponents, until the magical girl— the titular Aria—shows up to rescue him. There’s a lot of passing references to either actual historical or well known fictional characters scattered throughout this series, but it’s really a case of plastering window dressing on a largely empty stage. Aria turns out to be a distant relative of Sherlock Holmes, but that plays into her character and various plots—how? There’s another supporting character called Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc), but that reference is brought to bear on the anime —how? Aria the Scarlet Ammo also offers up a lot of expected fan service and passing harem tropes, but it’s just all so lackluster that it’s hard to actually even get worked up about how tired and predictable it all is.

I took some considerable heat on our anime forum when I didn’t “realize” that Shakugan no Shana was a masterpiece, but let me go on record here and now stating that if I in fact don’t consider Shana very good, it is absolutely stellar when compared to Aria. My review of Shakugan no Shana talked about some of the other properties that danced around this same basic premise, so it’s not necessary to repeat those comments here, other than to say it’s obvious that Aria the Scarlet Ammo was an attempt to somehow repackage Shakugan no Shana under slightly different circumstances and (obviously) a different name. Are the creative minds behind these enterprises so bereft of new ideas that they seriously can’t come up with something different once in a while?

To be fair, there are a couple of minor elements here that keep Aria the Scarlet Ammo from becoming instantaneous landfill fodder (or at least decorative coasters). Kinji is actually a kind of interesting character, especially in his transformations into a kind of lugubrious Buddy Love-esque Prince Charming type when he starts feeling amorous. For once we get a male character in a harem show that seems to have something going for him, and the character is written well enough that he’s actually conflicted about both his status as a Butei and his strange proclivity toward morphing, something that makes him attractive to women. And the show occasionally (and that means occasionally) manages to be funny in spite of itself, especially in the opening episodes when the relationship between Kinji and Aria is still in the make it or break it mode.

There are also some moments when Aria the Scarlet Ammo rises above its patently generic baseline to deliver a little something extra. Many of these moments are in the series’ often very nicely animated action scenes. The opening sequence of the series, for example, has Kinji madly pedaling a bicycle away from a Segway looking device that is nonetheless quite lethally armed with a variety of weapons which are obviously trying to take out the young man. In the meantime Aria is parachuting to the rescue, madly aiming her guns at the Segway while screaming at Kinji for being too idiotic to get out of the way. Over and over throughout the series, the action elements become the most interesting aspect, often from a purely visual standpoint as well, with an intentionally grainy overlay applied to imagery of bullets being ejected from gun cartridges and the like.

There may be some—not many, mind you, but some—who will come to Aria the Scarlet Ammo without a backlog of anime experience and will wonder why this review is so relentlessly negative. And truth be told, if you haven’t seen a hundred anime like Aria the Scarlet Ammo already, chances are you’ll find it perfectly acceptable. For everyone else, why watch a copy of a copy of a copy when you can watch the original? Even if that original is Shakugan no Shana.

Aria The Scarlet Ammo: Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Perhaps it's only fitting that Aria the Scarlet Ammo's AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1 is at times as lackluster as the actual series is. Could it actually be possible this is a 2011 production? While this high definition presentation is certainly a good deal sharper and better detailed than some of the lamentable upconversions we've had recently from FUNimation, this is still a curiously colorless affair a lot of the time, with a desaturated palette (skin tones are almost white a lot of the time) and a relative paucity of bright engaging colors. The anime does get extra points for some very well done CGI which is woven into the more traditional cel animation with ingenuity and a lot of style, and in fact some of the action elements explode with greater color (as do some supernatural elements that start entering the series as it goes along). But a lot of the group shots are just haphazard looking, with an overall softness and "blah" feeling that clearly indicate the animation crew was about as excited by this property as I am.

Aria The Scarlet Ammo: Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The good news—if there is any—with regard to Aria the Scarlet Ammo comes courtesy of its boisterous English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix. The mix here is incredibly vibrant and features a wealth of surround activity. There's also extremely aggressive LFE in virtually every episode. Voice work is about what you'd expect it to be from a cast of FUNimation regulars, with Todd Haberkorn's Kinji sounding kind of like a dejected surfer dude and Leah Clark's Aria perfectly annoying most of the time (as the character should be). The Japanese language track is delivered with a relatively anemic sounding Dolby TrueHD 2.0 mix that repeats the recent trend of original language mixes being considerably less aggressive sounding, especially with regard to overall amplitude. Fidelity is fine in both of these mixes and dynamic range is quite wide at least on the English track.

Aria The Scarlet Ammo: Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Episode 4 Commentary features Luci Christian (Riko) and Todd Haberkorn (Kinji).


• Episode 6 Commentary features Zach Bolton (ADR Director), Leah Clark (Aria) and Todd Haberkorn.


• Promotional Video (HD; 1:50)


• Original Commercials (HD; 1:54)


• U.S. Trailer (HD; 1:04)


• Textless Opening Song "Scarlet Ballet" (HD; 1:32)


• Textless Closing Song "Camellia no Hitomi" (HD; 1:32)

Aria The Scarlet Ammo: Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm sorry (really, truly I am) if there are any rabid Aria the Scarlet Ammo fans out there who were breathlessly awaiting a validation of their opinion with this review. I've simply seen too many (way, way too many) anime exactly or mostly like this to even care anymore. If you've never seen an anime about a superpowered girl dropping out of the sky to rescue a guy, and then partnering up with him to fight baddies right and left, you could choose to start with this one. But why, when there are so many, many other better ones out there?