The Law of Ueki

Shounen.

Shounen has changed.

Ever since the time Kosuke Ueki made his debut on the big screen in 2005, there have been plenty of great shounen series that made their appearance and became a part of the shounen hall of fame. Most of those, including stuff like FMAB, HxH, Assassination Classroom, stand up pretty well in 2020. But does that hold true for The Law of Ueki as well? Readon to find out!

Video Review can be found here:

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Premise & Story:
The story revolves around the life of Kosuke Ueki who is given the weird but creative power to turn trash into trees by his teacher, Mr. Kobayashi. Mr. K (Kobayashi) is his "God Candidate" - a sponsor of sorts. Ueki, with the power that he has, has to now compete against other high school kids who were similarly granted these powers by their god candidates in a large-scale battle to win both the "Blank Talent" - basically a wish-granting thing, and the promotion of Mr. K to the title of being God Almighty. If you boil it down, it is basically a big-ass tournament arc where the future of the world will be decided by the winner. And obviously, since supernatural powers are involved, harming the civvies is a no go!

All the characters in this show start off with a pre-defined number of talents that they possess - the talent to study, the talent to run, the talent to be liked by girls and so on. You use your power you got as a "candidate" on normal humans, you lose one of your talents. You lose all your talents and you go poof. You will no longer exist. Ueki, being the protagonist, starts the battle on an automatic disadvantage compared to the other candidates - most of them start off with 200 talents while Ueki, with his liberal use of "celestial powers" on regular humans for absolutely the most well-meaning reasons, starts off with around 10. Stakes, stakes. Its all about the high stakes here.

Now, if you notice all the candidates are high school students. It sound silly as hell - this entire business of letting high school students basically call the shots - but the show is super self-aware and absolutely addresses it at some point in the future. But yeah, that's enough about the story, let's talk characters.

Characters:
Kosuke Ueki. He's a selfless lovable goofball who only cares primarily about two things in life - one, to always be there for his nakama and 2, to always hold up his sense of justice. Of course, while he IS the focus, there are other characters in this show too. He eventually runs into other characters who basically become his "nakama". Among them, the most prominent one is Ai Mori - a character who I found to be particularly annoying initially because of her high pitched voice and tons of jokes that just didn't seem to land. But as the show progressed, I just found myself warming up to her. I liked her character more and more as the show went on and even the jokes started being funny. The other characters aren't as prominent as her, and just talking about them would kind of fall into the spoiler territory so I think I'll refrain from discussing them. But they get their moments in spotlight for sure - they're not the most fleshed out characters ever, but they're decent enough and do the job. The one that's the most fleshed out, of course, is Ueki himself. And it all basically ties into the extremely abnormal sense of justice that he holds.

The reason behind his abnormally strong sense of justice is something that isn't exactly addressed in the initial 5 or 6 episodes of the show and that may make him seem like an uninteresting cardboard cutout of a character, but rest assured that the show eventually reveals it to you and it just ends up tying a lot of loose ends in your head.

Strong Writing and Tendency to catch the viewer off guard:
I'd even go as far as to say that that's kind of a general theme with this series. You'll have questions as you watch, you'll think "Hah, I bet the writer forgets about this!" and then you watch the episodes go by smugly thinking how correct you were. Only for the writer to pull a "HAH, you thought bitch!" on you and they bring back a loose end and tie into a latter part of the story just for everything to make sense. THAT, in my opinion, is where the show truly shines. It has the tendency to catch you off guard and surprise you in ways you wouldn't normally think it would be able to. And it does that over, and over and over again.

The fact that the show is able to explain most, if not all of your questions, by the time the credits roll is a testament to its solid writing.

Minor Issues:
Solid writing notwithstanding, nothing can take away from the fact that the plot threads that get introduced feel slightly forced at times - especially when new power systems get introduced out of the blue or when stuff just conveniently happens to work in the favor of our protagonists. There's also the typical anime issue of the series completely doing away with any "blood" (well, 99% of the time anyway) in order to adhere to the genre conventions and not make it too overly dark but that negatively impacts immersion to a degree in my opinion. And then there's the comedy - which, as I've already mentioned when I talked about Ai Mori - is pretty hit and miss initially.

Final Words:
Other than that, there's not much here that I can nitpick and complain about. It has solid art and animation throughout the entirety of its run, the openings are absolute bangers - they're literally some of my favorite Openings in anime as a medium - and the soundtrack works well in general. Add to that package a solid story that wraps up nicely in its run and decently written characters and you've got an anime that I'd definitely recommend. The Law of Ueki, on my personal scale, is a strong 8 out of 10. If you are in the mood for some classic shounen action, definitely do give this one a go!