Halo Legends: The Babysitter

I've been playing games and stuff (look forward to a DJ hero review) so I thought that I should come back with a review on the Halo anime "The Babysitter." Now, I know what you're thinking: You don't care about the anime... and yeah, I can see why. But, I do love the Halo series with a passion, and I was going to kick myself into I finally write this, so just bear with me, and sooner or later, I'm going to give you a review on why DJ Hero is worth the cash (take that as an early review). Now then, I'll just give a detailed summary (hint hint: spoilers) on what the anime is about and how I thought of it:

The story
The story takes place during the year 2542 and 2552, as evidence by Dutch's appearance (from ODST) and the Spartan (since most of the Spartans got killed on the Battle of Reach in 2552, and Dutch had his own story before 2542 in the Helljumper comic series). It's about 4 ODSTs, the cocky marines of the military, and their mission to assassinate a Prophet (no particular one). The mission going to be led by a Spartan-II, which for people who haven't read the book, creates a huge problem: The ODSTs have a huge rivalry with the Spartans ever since John killed 3 of them during the events of the book "Halo: The Fall of Reach" which was also discussed in the aforementioned comic series. One ODST in particular, O'Brian, gets extremely upset when he finds out that the Spartan-II, which I heard the name is supposed to be Cal-141 (I never heard it myself), will be taking the shot as O'Brian will be the backup shot.

The mission is actually pretty interesting despite the fact that it has little to do with the overall Halo universe, like the game Halo 3: ODST: The squad will travel to an unknown planet where the Forerunners, beings that were before humans and the Covenant, lived on to assassinate a Prophet who's going there for a ceremony who's in charge of a major supply ring. It seems like a good reason, but like I said, they were too brief with it and it doesn't have too much of an impact on the war seeing as how they're just killing a lower rank Prophet, but hey, it's a mini-series...


O'Brian (left) after he heard from Cortez (right) that the Spartan-II will be their commander. Note that he looks like the main character from Cowboy Bebop, and I even almost called him Spike for the whole review

Anyway, they jump using the pods into the planet, but one ODST (the black guy named Checkman) got sideswiped by an asteroid and landed on the planet the wrong way, burning him up in the atmosphere. Dutch, Cortez, and Cal makes it through without a hitch, but O'Brian also got sideswiped and blew out his oxygen tank, To make matters worse, he even landed right in a pool of water and is slowly sinking as his pod jammed, which could resulted in his death had Cal not saved him. Now, I just wanna point out that I call BS on this scene because even though Spartan-IIs were physically augmented they should not be able to pick up and toss a pod around so simply. Sure, they're stronger, but they aren't strong enough to lift up tons of metal. Either way, O'Brian was saved and relieved, but his expression quickly changed as he found out that it was Cal who saved him. Cal then tries to act all badass by just walking away.

They kept going for hours to their destination and we see our only snippet of action: there's a patrol of Grunts in the way. Before you get too excited though, these Grunts, like the game, are taken down faster than you could get a good look at him: Cal jams a combat knife into a Grunt's neck while Cortez and Dutch rips off the methane gas mask and breaks a Grunt's neck. However, when it was time for O'Brian to kill his, he accidentally stepped on a twig and revealed his position. He quickly killed the Grunt, but not before a Brute Chieftain discovered him with his hammer, but luckily, it was caught by Cal. The Brute knocks O'Brian into a nearby river with the clichéd waterfall as Cal knocks him into the river. There's a short hand to hand combat scene of Cal kicking ass as O’Brian hangs on to a nearby branch, loses his guns in the process. Eventually he is saved by Cal who beat the crud out of the Brute (Cal even shattered the Brute's helmet), but when Cal carries him back to the group, O'Brian yells at Cal for embarrassing him in front of his squad mate. Again, Cal just walks away like a badass.


Take a good look, before they gonna be dead later

Eventually, after a short walking montage and a conversation between I think Dutch and O'Brian about thanking the Spartan, to which O'Brian refuses to do, they make it to the assassination point where they overlooked the ceremony taking place. Cal gets ready to take the shot until a Brute Chieftain finds them in the temple like location they were in and swings his hammer at O'Brian. Cal notices this early enough to push him out of the way, but is severely hurt by taking the hit for him. Cortez and O'Brian tackle the Brute to the ground and Dutch opens fires on the Brute's face (which is interesting to note because not only does Dutch steals the moment here, if you look closely you see that there's crack marks all over the Brute's helmet, which leads people to believe that this was the same Brute that Cal fought against, but I'm not sure). Ouch.

However bad the Brute felt, Cal was severely damaged in the process, and they had to access the diagnosis by removing Cal's helmet which revealed that, oh my gosh, it's a female! Cal was a beautiful female under that armor, but she's hurt like something awful. With blunt trauma to the head and shoulder, she can't hold the rifle, steady it, or even see properly, and to that, she shouts for O'Brian, the backup sniper, to take the shot, which he did with great success. After they escaped (not shown), Cal hands Dutch a chip (the footage of the mission from her helmet) and tells him to hand it to Dr. Halsey (a major figure in the books) and when Dutch tells her to do it herself, Cal tells him that "we both know I can't" and dies shortly after. Back on the ship, the trio remorse the death of Cal and even defends her when a random ODST came up to them and insults her for dying on the mission (seeing as how Spartans were supposed to be gods), showing that they cared for their fallen sister. Especially O'Brian, who hasn't said a word since the mission ended, who recalls all the times Cal saved him.


If Cal had a gun, why didn't she use it against the Brute?

My thoughts :
What did I think of the episode? It was actually pretty decent, so it's not like it's my first anime: I've seen too many clichés here, and for a 20 minute short, that's bad. I mean, the cocky young O'Brian (who in a side by side comparison is actually 2 feet shorter than his buddies), the mysterious badass Cal who turned out to be a girl, and the corny You're the only one who can do it line that Cal shouts near the end is so overused. I did liked how O'Brian was actually young, seeing as how not only ODSTs were young, but can be recruited at the age of 15 (like Romeo from ODST in the canon comic series) and how cocky and badass he thinks he is, but it got old after a while, which thankfully, he shuts up near the end.

I also should note the lack of action about the anime: Sure, I already knew which anime episodes were action orientated and which ones was drama induced (I look forward to the Homecoming episode for this), but the action was way too brief to even make it memorable. I mean, if you got something in your eye, you might've missed it entirely. Still, the drama is pretty well done, and even though I knew Cal was a girl from all those anime clichés, I think that the people who didn't read the books would probably be shocked about a female Spartan. What I didn't like about the Spartan was that they tried too hard to make Cal a badass: I mean, not only does she barely act the part (silently walking away gets old), but she was severely under-detailed.


Why do the Brutes look so weird?

About details: It was clear that while the anime had its own style, it's the environment that looks great, but the people are barely detailed. I mean, I don't recall the ODST armor being to smooth OR bulky, and why does Cal's head so much smaller than her body should allowed it? The environment steals the show here obviously, and the CG like animation used at the ceremony scene was a nice touch, but it was brief. I also should note that the Covenant looks extremely awkward, from the Grunts to even the Brutes, Elites, and Prophet. Nothing stands out much; even the guns are poorly detailed. However, it's the drama that wins this over.

Final notes: I also noticed a few inconsistency in this canon episode: How did that random ODST guy near the end of the episode know what happened in the mission if it was classified? And it was even hinted that he knew that the Spartan died.... how would he know that if all Spartans were classified as MIA to keep morale up (if Spartans don't die and they're on your side..... that's usually a good thing)? However, these are just minor things, but for a Halo fan like me, it just bugs me a little since it somewhat ruined the ending. And about the ending: near the last few minutes of the anime they seemed to have rushed what happens to meet their timeline and that hurt the show a lot. Still, I loved the ending since O'Brian constantly kept thinking about Cal. Now, I find it hard to believe he fell in love with her, but I liked how it was ambiguous: it's up to you to decide what he was thinking about her and why. Some thought he liked her while others thought that he couldn't get over the fact that she's dead. I personally thought of it as he was saved by her numerous times and he never once said thank you. Again, think about it as you will.

Score:
Story ---- 8.5
-Damn good despite how short it is, and if that truly is Dutch from the ODST side stories, then I consider this a nice cameo. Still, there's a complete list of all 32 Spartans who survived the augmentation, so where did this one come from?

Sound ------- 7.0
-No one actor stands out in particular and I only heard 2 Halo themes throughout this whole episode, and considering how little the guns were used, I can't say that anything relates to Halo's sound effects.

Animation and detail ----- 8.0
-Simple is just putting it mildly: There's disproportioned Spartans and the character models looks severely under detailed, but the Covenant looks extremely weird. Still, the environment looks very nice and seems to be a high point.

Fun Factor --- 8.0
-I love anime and Halo so this is a nice treat. I can't say that it's the best anime, but it does both the anime genre and the Halo universe justice, and it definitely pumps me up for the next episode

Final Verdict - 8.0
-A worthy addition to the Halo universe and, nitpicking aside, it does a great job for keeping me entertained. I was really anxious about the whole idea, but it definitely delivers. I am still looking forward to Bone's The Package and Production IG's Dual and Homecoming episodes, but at least I know that it's shaping up to be something awesome. I wanted to include a link, but they took it down off YouTube... maybe there's more, but you'll have to find one yourself.


Yes, that's a girl.