Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Needless: Collection 1 Blu-ray Movie Review

More like mindless. . .fun.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 26, 2011

It makes perfect sense that Needless is the product of Japanese animation studio Madhouse, because it is one flat-out crazy show. Lots of animes take place in a post-Apocalyptic Tokyo, but few have the goony and goofy elements that pervade Needless at virtually every turn. Needless explodes into “meta” commentary with great regularity and also isn’t above suddenly stopping in multiple freeze frames to give us brief interstitials about what we’re seeing. A crazy quilt (emphasis on the crazy part) of dramatic and comic elements, this is a series with cult appeal written all over it, probably especially alluring to younger males who will no doubt love its sexual undertones and bevy of scantily clad beauties. The anime is based on a manga by Kami Imai, but it evidently strays fairly radically from the story originally presented in graphic novel form (where have we heard that one before?). The nuts and bolts (emphasis on nuts) of Needless has to do with the survivors of a devastating global conflict which has left Japan the victim of nuclear near-annihilation. The epicenter of the explosion activity in Tokyo is now known as the Black Spot, a highly irradiated sector where survivors who flocked there became exposed to the radiation and mutated, becoming a sub-species of super-powered humans known as the Needless. (I think something may have gotten slightly lost in translation, as the series tends to bandy about the word “needless” as meaning something akin to “unnecessary”). Needless sets up a number of camps of good guys (and gals) and bad guys (and gals) from virtually the first moment. Our heroes are Cruz Schild, a green haired little boy who’s part of an armed rebellion, and Adam Blade, the sort of spectacularly muscled priest you probably never had in your catechism class, who rescues Cruz in the first episode and reveals himself to be an interestingly powered Needless. On the villainous side of things we have the nefarious aggregation known as Simeon, the sort of multi-national corporation it's easy to hate, headed by hiss-worth Adam Arclight (note the identical first names for our hero and villain, it's not coincidence). For some reason Simeon is interested in tracking down both Cruz and Blade, leading to a number of close scrapes and out there battles.

There are some decidedly un-PC elements to Needless, probably none more so than the fact that Blade, a priest, is a skirt-chasing sex fiend (or something close to it, anyway) who can barely keep his mind on the battle at hand if a pretty girl walks by. The fact that Blade is also the mentor and protector of a young boy may give pause to those who are upset by the worldwide priest pedophilia scandal. What saves (no pun intended) the series from being overly smarmy is its patently goofy take on everything. A fairly straightforward dramatic scene will suddenly erupt in all sorts of “meta” commentary, as we get a series of freeze frames with brief explanations of what characters are saying. The animation style will also change dramatically in these more comedic moments. When Blade gives a kick or two (or three or four) to Eve, another of his young co-horts, the style gets completely goofy, a 180 degree turn from the more stylized and intricate character designs that populate the main dramatic part of the series.

Needless is an unapologetic proponent of two popular forms of “fan service.” First and foremost, its sexual content is unabashedly lascivious if not disturbingly provocative. Long, lingering shots of women’s bodies, typically their ample bosoms, fill the frame, and the show is not above letting an extremely buxom babe ride a motorcycle, while the frame is resolutely centered on her jiggling anatomy. Perhaps only slightly less interesting to the younger male demographic toward which Needless is pretty obviously skewed are the fighting elements, which erupt in virtually every episode with hyperbolic abandon, often featuring some of the more impressively graphic (as in design, not blood and gore) animation styles the series offers.

Building through a series of lunatic battles that have various people “declaiming” various powers, a la Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh, Needless builds to a fairly satisfying mid-season climax where the forces of good and evil square off, with often annoying little Eve the center of some particular drama. Just when it seems that good has triumphed, it looks like evil has really had the upper hand all along, and the first half of the season is left with a nicely ambiguous cliffhanger to get people to spring for Needless Part 2.

Like many animes, Needless struggles to escape the confines of its fairly rigid set of plot points as it gets deeper and deeper into the series. Once the basic setup of who's good and who's evil has been established, and the real battlelines have been drawn, we're in for one episode after the other where that's pretty much all that does happen: battle after battle. It's often extremely weird and goonily handled, but it makes some of Needless play like an endless game of déjà vu.

This is an often loud, boisterous series that is so relentless all of the time that it may be physically exhausting for some to sit through. It is undeniably funny a lot of the time, though, with bizarre sight gags, weird doubles entendres and other wordplay and just an out and out looney-tunes ethos that makes it hard to ignore, for better or worse. Filled with inventive character designs, and a really bright and vivid palette, Needless isn’t any great masterpiece in the anime pantheon, but it’s near perfect mindless entertainment. It may hint at some deeper, darker themes, but when you get right down to it, Needless isn’t about much more than Baywatch ever was, namely pulchritudinous babes and muscular hunks.

Needless: Collection 1 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Needless Collection 1 jiggles and undulates onto Blu-ray with a very appealing looking VC-1 encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is about as bright and colorful an anime as any fan could ask for, with incredibly well saturated colors across the entire spectrum wheel. Character design is sharp and distinctive, and such unusual elements as Cruz's bright green hair pop with really impressive vivacity. This series tends to be quite graphical in its design elements at times, with weird interstitials popping up at unexpected moments, and those pure design elements are also very well represented on this Blu-ray. Some of the backgrounds are done in a quasi-"soft focus" style but even those are clear and well detailed. No artifacting or banding of any import was noticeable.

Needless: Collection 1 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Needless Collection 1 offers two lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mixes, one in the original Japanese and a very spry English dub. Both of these tracks sport really excellent fidelity, with ear piercing low end at times, courtesy of some riotous sound effects and a pulsating rock score. The one odd thing about this series is its lack of a surround track, given its virtually episodic battles, which include a wealth of fanciful sound effects. Aside from that qualm, this is a nicely detailed set of tracks, and even those who don't usually like English dubs may find a lot to like in this particular instance. This is a relentlessly loud and really aurally busy soundtrack a lot of the time, so you may actually end up turning this one down after a while.

Needless: Collection 1 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Secret of Saint Lilly Academy (HD; 15:31) consists of six brief and silly episodes where Cruz cross-dresses as a little girl to infiltrate an all-female academy to uncover a "secret."
• Needless Information is a text based supplement (with illustrations) that goes through a host of terms used in the Needless universe. It's quite informative and it's often very funny.
• Character Sketches (HD; 9:51)
• Clean Opening Animation (HD; 1:32)
• Clean Closing Animation (HD; 1:32)

Needless: Collection 1 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The back cover of the keepcase insert proclaims a log line of sorts for Needless: "Crazy times call for crazy measures." The fact that "crazy" is in a relatively huge font compared to the rest of the quote in both of its uses may hint that Sentai is only too aware of how outré this series is. But it's goofiness is definitely part of its appeal. This is certainly not a show for prudes or those who decry television violence. In fact rarely in the world of anime have sex and violence been so unremittingly interwoven. This is certainly a series with an out there sense of humor, though, which at least partially mitigates any salacious or prurient content. Despite Needless' occasional attempts at "deep thoughts," this is better approached as pure mindless entertainment that is bright, colorful, loud and only occasionally really obnoxious. Recommended.