I really like these multi-studio vignette productions. They always bring out some of the coolest anime studios to do some excellent short films with some of the highest budgets they will likely ever wield. As much as I liked The Animatrix and Batman Gotham Knight, Halo Legends really blows them both away. Explaining any clip too long would just be redundant, since you can watch them yourself, but here’s a once-over.
Studio 4c produced the 2-part ‘Origin’ using their 2 most frequent styles (highly detailed and acid trip stylish) lavishly drawn, though not featuring a large amount of movement. The clips are kind of boring, but with the other videos in the series, they didn’t need to be totally active, so I think it works out. Studio Bones produced ‘Prototype’ with the thought apparently of ‘what if Halo had fucking badass mechs?’ Another 4c clip, ‘the Babysitter’ details a particular mission to kill a Covenant priest by a team of a spartan and some soldiers. It’s not as good-looking as I would have liked to see from a 4c production, but nonetheless it was fun, and very ‘like Halo.’
Casio Entertainment, whom I had never heard of, blew the fucking roof off of the thing with their amazing clip done entirely in high-grade CG and detailed with textbook adherence to the Halo style. This clip was balls-out-amazing and contained nothing but adrenaline-pumping action throughout. However, as amazing as it was, my favorite clip was definitely the Toei Animation one, in which Toei literally turns Halo into an uproarious, ingenious parody of their usual shounen action shows, especially Dragon Ball Z. Finally, there was Production I.G.’s clip, ‘The Duel,’ which was easily the most insane, dramatic, and beautiful. It was done entirely in water-color style and recounted a tale of the covenant as if the setting was ancient Japan. It was surreal and amazing.
So, it was all awesome. Oh wait. Right. Bee Train.
Fuck you, Bee Train. Fuck you straight down to hell. Bee Train is, long and by far, the worst fucking animation studio ever, bar none. No. Do not name a studio you think is worse, because they are not. Studio DEEN has produced more great anime than Bee Train. Toei proved themselves to be above them right here in this compilation. Bee Train is fucking godawful. Every single anime that they have produced is either the worst thing ever, or the biggest disappointment. Their ‘Homecoming’ clip is a unique mixture of the two into something so bad it is literally unfathomable.
Who the FUCK keeps calling these fucking bastards to do clips for these compilations? Didn’t they get the memo about how much Bee Train’s installment in Batman Gotham Knight sucked? And this one is worse! Where do I fucking begin?!
Like every Bee Train production, the animation is horrendous. When there isn’t some retarded pan shot going on, characters are essentially sliding across the background and when people are shot, they fall awkwardly enough to be hilarious. I watched the Halo Legends anthology with two friends, and we laughed every single time someone was shot because it looked stupid as shit. In spite of hiring good voice actors, the dialog was fuck-ass-terribad, sounding exactly like the dreck these bastards carted out for Phantom (the shittiest show ever made). Oh, and they told the story in two fragments, both of which plod along so fucking slowly that it is almost like watching nothing happen for 15 minutes.
One clip is about this bitch and her clone staring each-other blankly in the face for about 15 minutes while the bitch decides how much of a bitch she is and whether or not she wants to kill her clone because she doesn’t want her to fight because, as she crams down your god damn fucking throat with line after line, WAR IS BAD. The other half is about he same bitch fighting a battle, and in this battle a lot of people are shot, so it is assumed that they die, although the animation is not particularly reassuring about this idea, and no meaningful or cool-looking action happens because the shit keeps cutting away to watch the fucking bitch be a bitch to her clone.
All of the staring and gun shooting finally screeches slowly and painfully to an end when the bitch decides that killing her clone is too much a bitch move, especially since the clone is going to die before she will ANYWAY, and then she continues her battle and proceeds to get shot in the fucking heart and fall in the most awkward way imaginable to her slow death while her dumbass friends keep ignoring her commands to get their ship the fuck out of dodge until the clunker gets blown the fuck up.
Oh, and at the end, Master Chief’s ass shows up to look at the bitch’s body and put the charm she dropped into her hand – a process that takes about a grueling 45 seconds that feel like several years when the pain is so strong that watching any more of the shit might drive you to begin viciously biting your arm in an attempt to sever any kind of life-supporting veins.
This clip was fucking poison. This was worse than trash. This was a pile of shit atop a compost heap. Watching it along with the rest of the clips is like having the best fap of your life and then abruptly wrenching your dick right off. I can honestly say that I would rather be raped by a tentacle monster than ever have to watch this shit again. It was actually so bad that it was almost awesomely bad. My friends and I laughed many, many times throughout, when we weren’t screaming things like ‘DEAR GOD WHY’ and ‘FUCK YOU BEE TRAIN AAAAA!!!’
Please, Bee Train. Stop producing anime. For the love of fucking god. Or if you continue, DON’T PUT YOUR SHIT RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF A MOVIE FILLED WITH AWESOMENESS, LOWERING IT’S VALUE AND KILLING MY GOD DAMN BUZZ. Rot in hell.
(I was beginning to wonder if I’d get to use my ‘Bee Train Sucks’ category again!)
Related Posts:
Everybody Gets One: Anime’s Personal Rage Machines – In which I go into full detail about the shittiness of Bee Train.
My Sword Is Unbelievably Dull 
Hmm… I have to wonder if you would’ve hated Homecoming this much if it had been exactly the same, but not done by Bee Train. Kind of feels like your ongoing rage-on for Bee Train coloring your opinion excessively, here. I watched the same seven episodes you did, and came away with pretty damn different opinions…
I didn’t really like Odd One Out, for example. I didn’t think it was BAD, I just think I would’ve preferred its humor be… more Halo-centric, I suppose? It felt like watching a DBZ parody that happened to feature a Spartan, rather than watching a Halo comedy. There are so many things to make fun of in Halo! So why spend your Halo comedy doing a parody of DBZ!? It seems… irrelevant, I guess.
I agree with your other assessments, though (except for disliking The Baysitter, but I already explained my dislike of that over Twitter). Prototype, Package, Origins, and The Duel were fucking awesome.
.lolikappa
I didn’t watch this requiring it all to be Halo relevant. I’ve played all of the Halo games, and frankly, it’s not like the story is particularly interesting in any way. I love the designs, though, so those are always fun to see.
For me it was like ‘holy shit, this is an official DBZxHalo crossover by the actual studios involved in both’ so as a piece of canon it was almost beautiful. Fact is, it was the most entertaining video, and that’s all I ask.
I didn’t know that Homecoming was Bee Train before I watched it. I only knew that Bee Train was one of the studios involved. It was about 2 minutes in that I declared to my friends that ‘Bee Train is the only studio with animation this shitty.’ We confirmed it after the ep.
(Let’s just pretend I replied to the right thing, shall we?)
Mm… different strokes, I suppose. I’m an enormous Halo story dork, so for me these were all about fleshing out other little bits of the Halo universe.
Also, another reason The Babysitter annoyed me: the random Sino-Japanese architecture on an alien world. What the fuck was up with that? There was a brief mention of it in one of the short stories from the book of them, but it felt like a bad attempt at retcon rather than a planned thing.
(Oh, and I feel it is worth pointing out that Odd One Out is not remotely canon…)
.lolikappa
Not being a gamer, this Halo business completely eludes me. I have the Trocadero CD for “Red vs. Blue,” but that’s just because I heard it in a friend’s car and liked the sound. :)
But an anime adaptation… That’s far enough removed from pressing buttons and real-time strategizing for me to actually try it! Cheers.
Also: I was going to try and find a Bee Train show that wasn’t bad. But looking at their list of productions, I see that I either haven’t seen or haven’t enjoyed any of their shows. Wow.
Yeah. There are some that had potential – the original .hack is pretty okay (I was really into it back when it aired on CN and I have the complete collection) and I want to like El Cazador SO BAD. I just can’t get past how bad the production is.
I’m not a gamer anymore either, but when I was, I was pretty into Halo. The first two games remain among my alltime favorite video games, though the third one bites hard cock. I think I mostly like them because they are very easy, unique, arcade-style shooter games that are easily to just pick up, play a level of, and then put down. One of the very few games I’m good enough at to play on the highest difficulty, too.
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