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Title:
 Freezing: The Complete Series

UK Distributor:  Manga Entertainment

BBFC Certificate:  15

Suggested Retail Price (SRP):  £29.99

Episodes:  1-12 (of 12)

Audio Options:  English, Japanese

Subtitles:  English

Release Date:  17th December 2012

Reviewer:  Rich (Webmaster)
 

I try not to watch new series with too many preconceptions, but sometimes the cover art can tell you a lot about a series before you've even started watching it.  In this case the cover told me 'this is going to be like Sekirei'.

Freezing is set in a world under attack by an alien race known as the Nova, inter-dimensional beings with numerous special powers, including the ability to cast a 'freezing' field to limit enemy mobility.  The only force capable of battling the Nova are the Pandoras, genetically modified girls with superhuman abilities, and Limiters, boys who are able to negate the Nova Freezing fields and erect ones of their own.  In order to use her powers effectively a Pandora will choose a male partner to act as her Limiter, and the pair form a close bond that grants them even greater abilities the closer they grow.  The story follows Limiter-in-training Kazuya Aoi, whose first day at a special training academy goes very wrong when he interrupts a Pandora ranking exercise and causes the current top-ranked student Bridget L. Satellizer to be defeated.  Satellizer has built a fearsome reputation for her ruthlessness, earning her the nickname 'The Untouchable Queen' both for her prodigious combat skill and her reluctance to let anyone touch her.  Desperate to apologise for causing her to lose her top ranking Kazuya tries to get close to her, and decides against the advice of all of the other students to be her Limiter.  Satellizer is one of the few Pandoras her age to not have a Limiter, but her reluctance to let anyone get close to her means that she rebuffs Kazuya's advances.  However, Satellizer has made a lot of enemies at the school and her newfound uncertainty over how to deal with Kazuya gives many other Pandoras the opportunity to strike.  Can Satellizer hold off the attacks of older and more experienced Pandoras and the threat of the Nova without a limiter?  And why is she so reluctant to join with Kazuya?
 

There seems to be a growing trend in anime for action series based largely on buxom women fighting each other whilst losing as many clothes as possible, we've had Ikki Tousen, Tenjho Tenge, Master of Martial Hearts and Sekirei amongst others, and now we have Freezing.  Like most of these types of series the main character is a generic weak nice guy with hidden secret powers, the main love interest is a beautiful but cold girl who secretly likes him but can't admit it and an ever growing cast of rivals squabble amongst

themselves and vie for his attention.  The storyline is largely derivative, with the alien invaders impervious to conventional attacks reminiscent of the Angels in Neon Genesis Evangelion and the invaders from Strike Witches (and aliens from a host of other series), a weedy main character with hidden abilities like pretty much every harem action series from Tenchi Muyo! onwards and the hierarchical student battles from pretty much every school-based combat series from Baka & Test to Ikki Tousen.  The characters are standard anime archetypes, although at least they tried to give Satellizer a back story, and the character design gives nearly all the female characters breasts the size of watermelons.

As you can guess from the above there's not a great deal of originality and the characterisation sometimes seems to go no further than deciding on cup size.  What can I really say about this series?  The animation is surprisingly good, despite everything the production values are high and presentation-wise there's plenty to like.  There's also plenty of action and when a plot finally decides to appear in the last few episodes the series nearly reaches the heady heights of being average.  The problem is largely what goes before, and after eight episodes of vicious in-fighting and humiliation no amount of uniting against the common enemy is likely to rescue matters.  The main problem the series has, above and beyond even the utter lack of originality, is how unpleasant it is.  The series is quick to point out that the genetically modified Pandoras can recover from normally mortal wounds, and then seeks to prove it by repeatedly maiming and dismembering them.  The characters still suffer pain and the violence is brutal, with the animators seemingly taking a perverse pleasure in depicting them writhing in agony from horrific injuries.  The Pandoras are depicted as sadistic and compassionless, seeking to seriously hurt or humiliate their fellow students until a Nova attack reminds them that they're supposed to be on the same side.
 

However, even the exploitative violence is nothing compared to the sexual exploitation on show.  To say that this series is demeaning to women is a huge understatement, many of the older female characters are depicted as sadistic sexual predators who use their abilities to humiliate the younger students until they are brought into line by a man and suffer the same indignities themselves.  The treatment of the female characters throughout is thoroughly depressing, with Satellizer stripped, beaten and/or sexually humiliated

more times in the first few episodes than I'd want to count.  Most of the battles cause them
to end up naked, which is not unusual for these kinds of series but is far more frequent and unsavoury in Freezing than it is in the likes of Sekirei or Ikki Tousen, and pretty much every character that turns up is hell bent on humiliating Satellizer in front of Kazuya.  Freezing is probably supposed to be titillating and it borders on hentai at times, but it's nasty, exploitative and as far from sexy as any anime has come this year.

There have been quite a few of this kind of series released in the UK over the last few years, but in most cases they have boasted an at least vaguely interesting storyline or an engaging cast alongside the gratuitous nudity.  Freezing: The Complete Series has neither, the story is ripped off of a dozen other anime series and the characters are weak.  Satellizer is the only character with some modicum of back story, her fear of being touched stemming from a childhood trauma which makes the repeated sexual humiliation of her even more unpleasant.  Whilst the frequent nudity is probably supposed to be titillating I found the treatment of the female characters wholly depressing and the violence unnecessarily nasty.  The series is brutal and exploitative with its only redeeming features being a few good action scenes and unexpectedly high production values, which suggests that there is some money and decent animators behind it.  However, if this is the kind of thing that studios are putting their money behind in Japan I fear for anime's future.

Extras

Quite a few.  There are six anime shorts which eschew the violence to focus wholly on comedy and nudity, which actually makes them far less unsettling than the main series, as well as several series promos and the usual clean opening and closing sequences.  Not bad.

Ratings

Feature:   Extras:
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