White Radish Perfect Collection

Original Title: N/A
Romanized: The Item, The Apprentice, and The Evil at Tentacle High
Literal:

Plot Synopsis

The White Radish Perfect Collection consists of three of White Radish's shorts.

The Item: Three cute girls--a mage, a technophile, and a superpowered transforming sailor-suited girl--set off to infiltrate an evil looking castle, fight bad things, and take The Item from the Mighty Q'thulhu.

The Apprentice: A young man becomes the apprentice of a powerful sorceress in hopes of furthering his skills. But the sorceress is more interested in gaining power through dark rituals than the study of magic, and her new apprentice may be the key to her success or failure.

The Evil At Tentacle High: An SD poke at what never seems to happen when big, evil, tentacled things invade schools.

Quick Review

Rating: 2 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2003-06-08

This collection of shorts by White Radish showcases a solid cross-section of fun anime; each captures some classic anime feel, boiling down a few simple plot elements and adding a little satirical twist. The stories are bare bones (cute, scantily-clad girls fighting monsters and young boys battling evil), but their simple anime-ness, though self-aware, seems earnest. The acting is a bit stiff, and there are some rough spots in the pacing, but overall the flow is pretty good.

An impressive feat for a one-man studio, these shorts are fun enough to be worth watching as a diversion on their own, and good enough to be of particular interest to fans or potential creators of indie anime.

US DVD Review

The DVD is a basic production, distributed as a DVD-R (shouldn't be any problem playing it in modern DVD players, but some older ones might not like the disc). The disc features each of the shorts, plus trailers for The Item, The Apprentice, and Pink Lemonade, accessible through the nice looking animated menu. The video is taken from the digital masters, so it looks reasonably good, and the audio is crisp.

Content Guide

Violence: 2 - A bit of serious fighting.

Nudity: 2 - Some exposed skin.

Sex/Mature Themes: 3 - Tentacle rape, but it's silly and short.

Language: 0 - Nothing that I noticed.

Notes and Trivia

White Radish is currently working on an erotic sci-fi OAV series, Pink Lemonade. They also have a number of shorts (both personal and paid projects) available on their website, which show significant improvement in timing and execution over what's in this collection.

Availability

Available on VHS and DVD directly from White Radish.

Looking to buy? Try these stores: RightStuf (search) | AnimeNation | Akemi's a(nime)Store