I
would guess many of you have heard of the PSX games, Monster Rancher 1
& 2. Both are fairly popular, and like with Pokemon, they allow
you to carry a whole mess of monsters and train them to fight. The
difference here though is you 'unlock' discs (You put your own audio CDs
into the PSX console) to get new monsters.....each one is different and
you'll never know what you get.
However,
that's not all there is to Monster Rancher. There
is/was also an anime series to go along with the popular game of the same
name. Because this site is an 'anime' site, that is what the focus
will be on...the anime series "Monster Rancher"
Titled
"Monster Farm" in Japan, Monster Rancher started its run in
Japan in April 1998. Bohobot Entertainment picked up the series for
its BKN syndication block in 1999 and started airing it in September of
that year. However, it failed due to poor time slots (mainly 6:30 AM
for most people), and pulled BKN down to the point of
non-existance. (as of this page's publishing, BKN is no longer
around on TV) Thus, Monster Rancher made the move over to FOX, where
it resides today. It started on both Fox Family, and Fox Kids, but
failed miserably due to Pokemon and Digimon on the network side of things,
so they cut it back to just a Fox Family running, where it has proved
moderately successful.
Due,
to its runaround on TV, and no access to Fox Family, I've had to watch
this series through VHS (like I do with most other anime I enjoy). Although it's not the most imaginative of plots --Kid
gets sucked into his copy of MR and has to save the world there to get back home via some
secret Disk with a Phoenix in it.... :P--, it's not the worst that I've heard of.
The animation quality is alright, the voice staff did fairly well. And the soundtrack is one
of the better ones I've heard for dubbed anime on TV.....theres no borrowed tracks from
other shows, like some dubbed anime does to cut corners in costs.
The
series has finished its run on Fox Family. All 48 eps were
translated and aired, which is rare for anime on American TV....as an ep
or 2 usually gets dropped due to censors here in most series. Only
Gundam Wing and Digimon have repeated this feat.
As of
this time, there is a 3rd TV season in the works, and should be set to run
soon. Also 'Monster Rancher 3' for PSX/PSX 2 is on the way as
well. Keep checking back here for updates as to when and where both
will appear.
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