The Good:
1. The music. The Halo soundtrack is utilized very well, and the original track they use for "Origins" is pretty cool. The only time that the music is underwhelming is in "the package," but i'll comment on that later.
2. "Prototype." This is one of the few shorts that I liked. The armor fucking up the covenant's shit was pretty awesome, and It doesn't seem too out of place for Halo Canon (no, not even the wanktastic self-destruct, since we know the UNSC can make football sized thirty megaton nukes), since we know that the UNSC can seriously ruin the Covies shit on the ground, they just get their asses kicked in space. I probably would have liked it more if they hadn't made the main character so angsty, and just made him sacrifice himself to get his platoon off-planet, but for some reason Anime has to take itself so goddamn seriously.
3. "odd one out." This is a hilarious parody. It's funny as hell, and that's all that really needs to be said.
The Bad:
1. "Origins." The music in this was great, but the short itself ranged from boring to wall banging stupid. I knew the forerunners lost the war with the flood because they were idiots, but that wierd laser-axe thing their ships used was just fucking retarded. Also, sending a five-man team to destroy a major flood spore is retarded, and the results are easily predicted. (hint: they all die) The second short was a little better, but i'd have preferred if they used a shot of actual spartan armor in the "human history" flashback rather than the spartans from "300." Also, while the part at the end that shows humans and covenant races fighting together against the flood looks cool, It's completely non-canon. Seriously, it shows Humans, elites, jackals, Grunds, and brutes, all fighting the flood together. Nothing like that ever happened in the games. ever.
2. "The Duel." This short was just bad. Really fucking bad. I couldn't even watch it all the way through. the animation is almost painful to watch, and the samuri-fication of elite culture is fucking annoying. The last thing sci-fi needs is another goddamn warrior race.
3. "The Package." This short is wanktastic bullshit. It's like someone had an Idea to do this as the parody short instead of "odd one out" and someone told them to do it with a straight face instead. Unlike the armor in "prototype," the booster frames are completely unbelievable wank. All throughout the games and the books, we are told that humanity is loosing the war because they cannot match the covenant's technology in space, and here we see a squad of spartans use giant, shielded jet-bikes to blow gigantic holes in covenant warships whose shields are down because..... Hey look! A spartan doing a death blossom in a warship's hanger!
. The UNSC's apparent possession of a stealth ship that shoots lasers also clashes with the established setting a bit. As for the spartans, their wanktastic charge through the covenant warship is exactly how spartans don't fight. The books go out of their way to show spartans fighting tactically, using cover, and advancing under cover fire at every opportunity. Here, they just rush through pulling a bunch of gun-kata bullshit. So after all the running and gun kata-ing, the chief rushes in to find a cryotube containing...... Dr. Halsey's younger sister? Seriously. At this point in the timeline this woman is supposed to be in her mid-forties or early fifties. She's constantly described as a motherly figure to the spartans, and here she's portrayed as a fucking blonde bombshell? So the chief brings stripper-Halsey to the escape pods, only to be cut off by a pissed off red armored elite. He empties his MA5C harmelessly into his energy sword rather than attempting to vary his aim because everyone in this short has terminal retard-itis, and they duel. And by duel I mean "spastically swing their swords around like Jedi even though they aren't." Anyways, Shipmaster dickhead beams the red guy out and detatches that section of the ship to go to slipspace. The chief escapes with not-Halsey, and laments that he needs to become stronger because the writers feel the need to shoehorn in one last tired anime cliche. This is easily the worst short of the entire collection. I was rolling my eyes the entire fucking time I was watching this. It combines every cliche I despise about halo with every cliche I despise about anime into a festering pile of suck.
