Finally. After a virtually empty Winter Season, the worst spring season in more than 10 years, and a merely average summer season, we’ve actually got ourselves a really awesome season here in 2013. Lots of series made a really positive and really strong first impression, so let’s hope that they can keep all of that up. One series that didn’t was Kyoukai no Kanata for me. As good as the animation may have been, it was just bland, the characters were annoying, and it lacked anything to keep me engaged.
Out of all these wonderful and creative series though, the best first episode belongs to Kyousogiga, if you ignore episode 00, which was pretty much just the OVA (even though that one was really good too). It may not have the most frames of animation, but out of all the new series this season, it has the most heart put into it. This episode really shined in every single way.
I’ve seen people note how I don’t talk about what Kyousogiga is… but the thing is: I find it really hard to describe that in just a few sentences. I guess it’s about this bunch of people with supernatural powers living in this strange city where stuff happens and things, but that would do it a huge disservice. It’s Toei’s experimental depart just toying around and unleashing their creativity onto this short little series, but even that would be doing the characters a huge disservice. Even after this episode, I still can’t accurately describe ‘what’ this series is.
But considering the OVAs, this pretty much was the perfect episode they could have followed up with: it’s the episode that explains the background of the series: where did all of the characters come from? What is the world the characters live in? This episode shed lights to that, and I love some of the ideas they threw in. The key being this monk who can breathe life to whatever he draws (how’s that for an awesome idea!), creating a family along the years. The series also seems to be based on all these kinds of different worlds that coexist next to each other, with a central world being the main hub, it seems. I first thought that the lead female (who we only see in one minute in this episode by the way) was also the daughter of that rabbit-woman, but it turns out that she came from this central world in order to search for someone.
But how heart-warming was this episode: the whole monk’s family was so endearing, especially since we know how different the three kids ended up growing up. The characters all had wonderful chemistry together. But here is also one thing: the amount of details that the creators managed to stuff into just this episode is astounding. The budget may not have been as big as with the OVA, but every single shot here is creative. The direction is also fantastic: the animators really have this knack of saying a ton fo stuff with just a few images. And they just keep throwing these at the screen over and over, even in a slower pacing.
And the soundtrack. Definitely the best soundtrack of the season!
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)
You didn’t like Kyoukai no Kanata? I was admittedly on the fence with that one because of Mirai’s moe-ness, but the second episode really turned it around for me. Now I’m really looking forward to the series.
Kyousogiga is going to be my favorite of this season, and maybe in my favorite of all time too! I can rewatch it (which I did for the OVA) and never get tired of it! It’s an amazing series, and it’s really an anime you have to watch it to know what it’s really like! 🙂
Looks like you didn’t watch the 5 Kyousogiga ONAs that were released in 2012. They already told (among other things) the story of Myoue and Koto in a much shorter format.
It’s nice to see the TV series expand on them.
Yeah, Kyousougiga has far and away the best visual presentation of any show since Shin Sekai Yori. It might even be as good, not that we’ll be able to tell since the two are so wildly different.
I have to note, the 00 episode has what is easily THE BEST way to suspend disbelief I have ever seen in any medium. It does this with the very last verse of the poem in the very beginning: “Life; what is it but a dream?”.
It’s right.
I LOVED this first episode.
I’m not sure if I understood the OVA, though @_@
Heart is the word I was thinking when I saw this episode, mirroring what psgel says, I love the characters already, all of them, and that’s just two episodes, even the sexy girlfriend shows a bit more personality that you’d expect from the sexy girlfriend role. It’s unlikely to be beaten by any other anime this season.
Frankly I despised this episode. I’ll give it a few more eps, but nothing grinds my gears more than pointless randomness and wackiness in anime (Kill la Kill, I’m looking at you), and Kyousogiga has this in spades. It doesn’t help that I consider the animation in Kyou to be the worst of the season, vying with Flamenco in that regard. The characters, environments, and shading are flat, the frames and fluidity very low — there isn’t much going on besides activity and color.
Maybe I’m missing something because I didn’t watch the OAVs (I did watch ep 0, however), but the lack of a driving story and likeable characters really drops this season close to the bottom of the barrel for me.
Don’t bother with the OVA if you don’t like “randomness”.
Just out of curiosity, what’s a “driving story” to you if not an episode about the main family the anime is centered around, and how they got to the place the anime is set in, followed by the introduction of the story’s agent of chaos? And what makes these characters less likable to you than other anime you like? Also, do you consider storyboarding and framing to be far less important parts of animation than artwork detail and fludity?
I’m not trying to be antagonistic, just genuinely wondering.
Okay, so I take it that the OVA is an excellent bolt-on, but people don’t need to watch the earlier Kyouso Giga II ONAs (5 of them; EveTaku subbed those too) to cheer along with a faction of choice in the TV series?