Legend of DUO

Alternate Title: Legend of Duo, LoD
Genre: Drama
Format: 12 Episodes
Allegiance: mobanimation
Director: Kikuchi Koichi
Vintage: 2004
Intelligence Agency Report by: Lady Sage
In the not-too-distant future, humans have begun to fall victim to the Disease of Death from the loss of their purana, the essence of life. In order to save the humans, the vampire Duo reveals the secret ofpurana to them. However, this revelation was taboo, and now his old friend Zieg seeks to punish him.

Field Agent Report by: Lady Sage 
Plot
Characters
Impact
Visual
Audio
3.75
3.50
2.00
4.50
3.50
Overall 3.25
(not an average)

After watching the first episode of Legend of DUO, I had to go recheck the information for it. I simply could not believe it was a TV series and not a web animation. However, despite my absolute disbelief, it was made for television, and I thus continued, unaware of the mental anguish this series would cause me.

The initial reason for my confusion was how painfully obvious the extremely low budget was. The art is glossy and unremarkably pretty to look at, but the animation is the absolute worst I’ve seen made in the past decade. Most of the series consists of shameless monologuing as the characters stand stock-still, noticeably motionless except for their mouths. Only one or two ever actually change facial expressions through the entire series. Actual motion is exceedingly rare, and shortcuts are obvious and plentiful.

The plot, much like the visuals, had some potential that was quickly squandered. The premise was interesting enough; perhaps not the makings of a classic, but enough so that a halfway-decent series could have been built around it. However, the episodes only have a runtime of five minutes each. In those sixty minutes, the creators tried to tell an epic tale of friendship and betrayal. Unfortunately, it was a very poorly written and animated tale of friendship and betrayal, demoting it from “epic” to “wretched in every way.”

There are worse ways to spend an hour than watching Legend of DUO. Like having a car run over your feet repeatedly, drinking bleach, or watching Amazing Nurse Nanako. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a good thing in any way. Unless faced with something equivalent to the above choices, don’t watch this. Really, it’s for your own good.