Welcome back to “A Woman With No Reviewing Skills Watches A Low-Rated Anime Just To See How Bad It Really Is”! Seriously, though, this is the second time this year I’m reviewing a low-rated anime only to reiterate what everyone already knows. From what I can tell, though, “Waza no Tabibito” doesn’t seem to be even on the level of infamy that “Spectral Force” is; at the very least, less people have watched the former than the latter. Maybe it’s because it’s not based on an Idea Factory game this time, or perhaps it’s just that it took way longer for it to even get the English-subbed treatment by fansubbers. Either way, it’s probably for the best that Waza no Tabibito has largely gone unnoticed by the anime community, because even though it’s not quite as bad as Spectral Force, it still sucks a lot.
In the post-apocalyptic world of Waza no Tabibito, there is a group of people known as the Wazabito. These people live out in nature and train their hearts (whatever that means) to control a kind of power known as the wazans. One such Wazabito, Techni, is a traveling warrior who, one day, saves a little girl from a biological weapon known as an Oxylic. The girl, Ruri, comes from a city that is in search of more Patia, an energy source for the people that has also caused many problems for the world, such as civilization not progressing any further. Does any of this really get explored? Nope, because the anime is too busy throwing Techni’s boobs and ugly CGI animation in our faces!
Look, I’m not going to knock on the fanservice, since I knew going in that it’s an ecchi anime, but that fanservice is attached to one of the most generic fantasy stories I’ve ever seen. Not only that, but its 31-minute runtime leaves no time to explore the world or its characters. I could barely follow the story as a result; I hardly remember what “wazabito” or “Patia” are even supposed to mean. Also, as a result of the lack of time to explore the characters, I couldn’t get attached to any of them. I couldn’t care less about Techni, despite her not being particularly unlikable, and the exact same thing could be said about the rest of the cast. This could have been fixed if Waza no Tabibito was a 12-episode series instead of a 31-minute “film” (I refuse to believe this ever played in theaters), but alas, ‘tis not.
….On second thought, it probably would have been better if Waza no Tabibito wasn't a series if it was going to be animated like this. Think of the ugliest CGI-animated thing you've ever seen in your entire life; I guarantee you that the animation here is worse than that. I respect Shun Matsuena for his work on "Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple", but any amount of hard work he put into this was absolutely wasted, and the animation was a showcase of that. One positive thing I can say is that there are some sort of nice-looking establishing shots, but that's not really saying much when the backgrounds don't look that impressive the rest of the time. Oh, and it bothers me how inexpressive the characters could be, especially Fuku, Techni's owl companion; aren't animal sidekicks supposed to have more expressions that what he displays with his little owl face?
Honestly, the most positive thing I can say about Waza no Tabibito is that the voice acting wasn't as terrible as the animation, but that's not really saying much. Techni is voiced by Rie Kugimiya, a well-liked voice actress who even I have a lot of respect for, but even though she doesn't give a bad performance here overall, it's clear that her heart wasn't really in it, resulting in this being one of her weaker roles. Again, the same could be said about the rest of the cast, including Tomoko Kawakami. I feel bad for saying so, given that this was one of her final voice roles before her 2011 passing and especially that there was a short tribute to her at the end, but I can't really say anything about her performance, given how insignificant her character was. Speaking of the end of the anime, I guess there was also an ending theme ("Anata no Tabi wo" by Sora Yuizuki, to be exact), but I pretty much forgot about it as soon as it ended.
Overall, Waza no Tabibito was 31 minutes I will never get back, and I'd recommend you to spend those 31 minutes you could spend watching this on something else. Even if you're a Kenichi fan, you're just going to come out of it disappointed. Now, I wonder what other bad anime I'm going to end up reviewing this year.... (Don't say "Spectral Force Chronicle Divergence". I've already watched it, and I'm not rewatching it.)
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