The Card Kingdom is under attack by two giant war machines, one white and
one black. Now its up to the card weilding Crown Knights (aka Jaja Uma
Quartette) to save their beloved kingdom from imminent destruction. But what
happens when your own power fails you? You stack the deck and kick butt!
The two episodes that make up Wild Cardz present fast-paced visuals and
cute character designs for the four main characters but, nearly all of the
supporting cast have distorted features which lack noises, making their
faces seem flat. Overall, this is a far cry from other recent high-quality
OVA ventures as seen in Japan as of late.
The translation leaves something to be desired, because the dub is virtually a
direct port of the very literal subtitled version. At times only a few
words were changed, making the dub dry and often unemotional during
fast-paced scenes. The English dub is probably one of the most annoying
dubs there is, due to the overacting of the villain Chee and the dry acting
of the supporting cast. But, other than that, the voices of the four Crown
Knights are what save this dub. Debora Rabbai as Jo Diamonds and Apollo
Smile as Coco Hearts give particularly memorable performances to the
otherwise shrill soundtrack.
Central Park Media has done all they can to make this OVA better than it is.
The DVD release features a DVD-Rom program that can be viewed when run on a
PC or Mac. This Macromedia Shockwave program features character dossiers, a
high quality picture gallery, scripts of both episodes, character dossiers,
and links to parts of the CPM web site. Besides that, the DVD features are a
time-honored set of interactive menus, language selection, scene access,
sneak peeks, and CPM's special feature of showcasing the show's main voice
actors.
In conclusion, if you liked Battle Skipper then you should enjoy this show.
Because, though the series is by the director of New Cutey Honey, Wild Cardz
is a very unmemorable anime that is nothing more than a reminder that you
could have bought something else instead.
