Level E

This show is great and soooo funny. I watched the English Dubbed verison by Funimation, I really only decided to watch the show because Vic Mignona was the voice of the lead character (and he's just the best). But the moment the opening started i was curious and then after i met the Prince I was hooked!!

The main character of the show is Prince Baka (thats what everyone calls him watch and you'll see why), he is a COMPLETE SADIST!!!! And it's awesome -_- He really gets off with making other peoples lives miserable. But you love him.

All the different characters are great, the alien races, and all the crap they are forced to go through because of the Prince is just to damn funny.

All in all this show is one that you just have to watch You Won't Regret It!!

Enjoy

Don't watch Level E expecting a grand, hard-hitting, emotionally-pulling storyline. I think as long as watchers keep that in mind, they can really enjoy the series.

I personally found it hilarious. It's why I kept watching (as opposed to other anime which pull you in through character development or storyline.) There are enough off-beat and interesting characters to keep things interesting throughout the series. When the anime ventured into Parody Land it did so thoroughly and with really funny results.

The storyline jumps around quite a bit, but I think it's a great series if only for humour points. Watch it.

I started watching Level E because I enjoy Namikawa Daisuke's voice acting, but I continued to watch it past the first episode because I was immediately sucked into the chemistry between all 3 of the main characters, or who I thought were the 3 main characters at the beginning of the show. After the first few episodes I lost some interest in Level E, but continued to watch it due to the effective humor it used and the excellent voice acting.

In the writing department, I would say Level E barely makes par, and only because of the humor the writer uses. The plot twists are insane elaborations of already used tropes, which is great as well, but the story is non-existent. It was just bits and fragments of scenes. There is nothing outstanding in the writer's ability to tell a story, and overall it lacks any sense of cohesion. We first meet Yukitaka, the baseball team's new star, Miho, the cute girl next door who's father miraculously does research on Aliens, and Prince Baka, a devious alien who goes to extreme lengths to wreak havoc and destroy peoples lives. While they were all stock characters, they worked extremely well together and there was a lot of humor between them. But alas, all but the Prince disappear for the majority of the series. What happened in between was a melting pot of witty takes or parodies on common anime tropes (orchestrated by Prince Baka), and great voice acting and decent animation.

The animation was well done (though I still dislike CGI), and the voice acting was great. Without the entire cast, many of the jokes wouldn't have been the same, and the animators were able to get the comedy on screen in a passable fashion. It wasn't anything out of this world, but it wasn't the worst animation ever, either.

So in the end this series is a mixed bag, which is why it's only 3 stars for me (it would be 3.5, but that's an impossibility it would seem). Voice talent and decent animation only get you so far when the writing, while funny, is devoid of any type of story.

TLDR Version:

+ Voice Acting
+Humor
+/- animation
- CGI
- Plot

The manga is superior to the anime.

As a fan of the original manga who read it many years ago, I concede that this may be a bit of my own nostalgia talking. Even though I enjoyed the anime, as well as some of the details that were changed (like the presentation of the prince's diary in the first arc, for example), I still believe that the manga is superior in the following areas:

Pacing
This is especially evident in the last arc, which was stretched from one manga chapter into two episodes, which made the original snappy, immensely fun comedic tour-de-force a little more plodding and sloppy.

Comedic timing
For a series that runs mostly on comedy, this is one area that was essential for the anime to get right... and they kind of pulled it off. There are more jokes in the manga though, and they're timed better. The anime, in contrasts, generally feels like it's trying too hard and being too obvious when it comes to the funny bits.You think Captain Kraft in the anime was funny? You should see him in the manga, where he's way more awesome IMHO. His slapstick moments are executed with more skill and subtlety, compared to the somewhat forced feeling you get from him in the anime.

Art and character expressions
The animation in this show is incredibly sloppy, with somewhat rough line art and tacky CGI. (The opening is one of the best openings I've ever seen in my life, though.) Togashi's art in the original, in contrast, is always well-done, in stark contrast to some of his latter series *coughcough*HunterXHunter*cough*. Character expressions are far more detailed and varied and realistic, and the style just has a unique flair to it, a raw, emotionally powerful quality, that is completely lost in translation. If you're fans of the prince, he's more attractive in the manga and is drawn in a wider variety of outfits.

I do think that Level E, in either incarnations (but especially the manga), is a genre-busting masterpiece. It is a completely unique work of art that is the result of Yoshihiro Togashi, blessed his twisted soul, trying to amuse himself and himself only, and not any specific demographic or genre audience. Remember how in Bakuman they define two kinds of successful mangaka, one of which is the type that draws whatever they damn well please, and it turns out to be hugely popular anyway? Togashi is most definitely that kind of mangaka. You want a serious, dramatic alien-hunting story? You can shove it, have some children in sentai suits and a hot alien teacher instead. The way the genre and style just bounces all over the place, without a single unifying driving plot or theme, is probably partly why the manga only lasted 16 chapters. Because it reads exactly as what it is: a piece that the mangaka made just to please himself. "Audiences won't stand for something like that? Who cares? As long as I'm having fun, it's all good." (I will say that this is one of the things that the anime tried to remedy - by tying in the rest of the story arcs into the princess's plot, it tried to give the entire story a coherence that I don't think is absolutely necessary and maybe even seems a little forced, since the original story arcs were meant to stand alone by themselves and have little to no relevance to each other. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.)

I rather like that kind of attitude to storytelling, you know? I don't care that Level E's not polished or coherent. It's pure, unadulterated fun. The humor in it is the very best kind there is - the kind that relies on your audience's intelligence and dares to twist your mind into convoluted knots for the pay off, instead of mere slapstick. What other anime out there uses up entire episodes as the set up for the punchline?

For that reason, it's rather sad that we probably won't be getting more of Level E. Heck, I'd count it a miracle if he managed to finish even HunterXHunter. Yoshihiro Togashi's inventiveness is something that I will never tire of, and I'm glad that at least with this anime, more people were able to enjoy a work that has been neglected by the general public for many years.

If you enjoyed the anime, you should definitely read the manga. Even if the general plotline is the same, the details and the way the story is executed is different enough to warrant it. Just to get more of the prince and princess, if nothing else. There is one manga-only chapter that has not been animated. It covers their honeymoon and even mentions the child that they have together. And you know that with two people like that, their honeymoon will definitely be something worth looking at.

Young highschooler, Yukitata has moved away from home to gain some independance from his family. However when he arrives at his flat he finds that a mysterious stranger is already there. An amniesiac pretty boy who claims to be an alien. Now, this alien price is no ordinary pretty boy; he takes a strange delight in watching people panic and squirm.

This trait of the Prince's, to manipulate those around him for his own amusement, is what makes this series good. Without the Prince this series would have nothing to show for itself. The Prince is smart, charismatic and sometimes cruel. Yet somehow isn't cold. When he gets screamed at he feigns innocence or just talks back with such wit, that the character attacking him looks stupid.

Yukitaka is great in that both he and the Prince playoff each other very well. Yukitaka often falls for the Prince's tricks, even though he is always very on guard around him. Unfortunately, Yukitaka dissappears for a while after episode 3 and this is when things start to go down hill.

Without Yukitaka reigning in the Prince, the Prince's manipulative ways begin to get tiresome. While there are some good episodes such as the 4th episode, most of them feel of a lesser quality than the first 3 until Yukitaka returns. They are still enjoyable and fairly funny but not as good as the first 3.

The music sounds nice, though it does get a bit repetitive.

The animation is smooth, though the animators do experiment alot thoughout the series. The character designs are pretty but only stand out now, in the 90s they would have looked the same as everything else.

Something to keep in mind while watching this show is that it is based off of a very, very short manga. WHich means there wasn't much material to work with. Which is what gives it its very disjointed and jerky feel. The author hadn't been drawing manga long; so probably founf it difficult to create a large connected story.

This show is different.
Not sure where to begin, but this show is all about charisma. The plot line is not continuous but every episode was thoughtfully done. The whole whole series can be summed up in one phrase, "Betcha didn't see that coming!" Every episode starts out misleading, usually with a dark or gloomy mystery or murder. At the climax the story is always turned upside down with a feeling it was all done in fun.

On the downside, the show does touch on some serious subjects such as murder and kidnapping then plays them off light-heartedly. This may be upsetting or disturbing to some people but it is not graphic in anyway. Some of the episodes were a bit distasteful so I did not watch each episode the day it was released. I found I had to 'prepare' myself beforehand to watch an episode since I never knew what was coming.

The characters are all done well. Even characters that only show up once. The main characters help glue everything together. The music is fitting and the animation is good. Sci-fi fans should love this as well as people who like mysteries. Everyone is not going to like this show, but everyone should watch this at least once even if just to see how a different way to do things can be done anime. This show and Beelzebub are my top two pics for best new series of 2011 so far.