Some quick first Impressions: Infinite Space, K-On and Basquash!

Infinite Space

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets a space-ship from a mysterious lady
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (Again, only if the rest of the season is bad)
Well what do you know? Yet another show with episodes of only five minutes. This one seems to go for a fully fledged storyline, though. That makes me wonder a bit whether it’s trying to bite off more than it can chew, but the potential is there at least. What it really needs to do now is make optimal use of the fact that it only has a very limited airtime, and seriously improve on the bad GC here. There’s actually quite a bit of potential in the story, but after only five minutes there’s hardly a lot to say about it. I do hope, though, that it’s going to last longer than simply 13 episodes that really is going to be the recipe for disaster.
EDIT: oh crap, it’s just a generic promotion for a video game of only 4 episodes long. Scratch all that I said above. This thing sucks.

K-On

Short Synopsis: Our lead character joins the light music club at her high school.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Waah waah I hate mainstream anime waah waah)
Well, there you have it: this series yet again has the typical flaws of a Kyoani-show: it just consists out of a rip-off of some of their other franchises, most notably Lucky Star and the concert episode of Haruhi. The personality of the four main characters in this series can quite effectively be mapped to the personalities of the four lead characters of Lucky Star, and it’s a series about a school band. Granted, the one thing that was new here is a much more messy style of animation: at least that’s something new from them. The show could grow into an enjoyable slice of life series, but my big problem with it so far (aside from the lack of originality) is the female lead character. There’s actually lots of potential in a school band, but instead of choosing a lead character with a passion for music, the creators here went for a clueless and clumsy ditz without any musical talents whatsoever. I foresee some forced developments here.

Basquash!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has spiky hairs and plays basketball in a huge car-like mecha.
Chance of me Blogging: 25% (Depends on what the heck it’s going to focus on)
Well, so this is incredibly stupid: here we have a spunky spiky-haired teenager… who is playing terrorist with a basketball of all things as a weapon. Seriously, he takes out an army of police officers with that thing. But hey: at least it’s fun! This was at least the best episode I’ve seen in this so far lackluster season, so at least that’s something. Even though there are huge amounts of bad logic and questionable plot twists (kids being able to control mechas better than trained adults? of course!), there are actually huge amounts of ideas in this series. The lead character may very well be your typical lead, but what I liked about him was his fiery passion for basketball. And I also loved the random ducks that showed up every once in a while. The visuals also looked totally sweet, but then again the question remains whether the creators can keep this up. My question for this series is the following: is the rest of the series just going to be a string of random basketball matches (very likely, considering his rival that got introduced in this episode), or is the basketball just going to be a vehicle to the real meat of the plot? Is this going to be a Buzzer Beater or a Gad Guard?

18 thoughts on “Some quick first Impressions: Infinite Space, K-On and Basquash!

  1. Sorry, but ‘blame Munto’ is not a real reason… So they decided to re-flesh-out the OVA and make a movie for that story. Big whoop. K-on is an original series. It’s sort of like how you can’t equate the lesser Madhouse shows (typically, the fanservicey shows) to their classier ones.

  2. I assume you don’t want to blog K-ON! after the failed experiment of blogging Munto, which didn’t turn out the way you wanted it to be, since the paragraph of text says nothing about Munto at all.

    I might watch K-ON, if I feel like watching moeblobs playing guitars.

  3. “I foresee some forced developments here. ”
    Oh god why do people use this term so much when they don’t like a show? Do you really even know what forced development is?

    Just say you don’t like popular show and be done with it, you don’t have to act all high and mighty and be a “lol critic” just to impress people, you’re not fooling anyone.

    I believe you should edit your post and put in “Waah waah I hate mainstream anime waah waah”.

  4. Okay, so is this better?

    Seriously though, what I meant by “forced developments” is that I could hardly believe that the lead character would become a competent guitar player within the span of the show. Hence if the creators do want to end the series with a bunch of concerts like in Haruhi, they’re probably going to force some unnatural character-development on her. But then again, I could be wrong. 😉

    Shippoyasha: Yeah, apologies, that may have been a bit too much. I’m just a bit too tired of Kyoani at the moment, and their seemingly never-ending tendency to rip off their own shows.

  5. Well, one particular knock on K-ON for me right now is its animation… color me surprised since it IS KyoAni. But like many others have said, it reminds me way more of something like A1 studios’ animation styles than KyoAni’s decidedly cleaner animation style. Though I heard you rather liked that style in Birdy shows, psgels.

    But yeah, I do understand the me-too style of KyoAni shows lately. The premise of this one isn’t special either. Too early to tell whether they’ll do anything special with it.

  6. So basically, you don’t like K-ON because it’s produced by KyoAni? A lot of your criticisms have to do with the original 4-koma and have little to do with KyoAni. I doubt that you’d be writing it off as Lucky Star + Haruhi concert just because it features four girls trying to form a band if it were done by some other studio. Unless, you’re blaming them for choosing to do this show as opposed to something else.

  7. blkmage: well, it’s one of the reasons at least. The lead female is annoying, no matter what studio produces it. My beef with Kyoani is that they could use their talents for so many interesting concepts, and yet they continue to just go with the same tried and true formula.

    Shippoyasha: yeah the animation style is indeed something I liked about this episode, but unlike Birdy I’m not that sold on the rest of the series yet.

  8. I can’t blame you for not liking K-on, I don’t even know why I like it myself. The lead really is annoying.
    It’s funny to watch people complain about your taste, though. It does make me grin every time 😀

  9. If this keeps up this season might be the worst in a long while. The only 2 show that I’m looking forward to are Spice and Wolf 2 and Phantom ~Requiem of Phantom… the raw’s out for Phantom and it looks like Bee Train did it again

  10. Well KyoAni is a relatively young and small studio, and they’ve already got a huge reputation. It’s a gamble to try something completely new, a gamble that they may not be ready to take. I do anticipate them doing something new in the next few years. Munto was an attempt, a half hearted attempt, but an attempt nonetheless.
    Also, as someone who’s learned the guitar, it’s actually not that hard to learn enough to play some songs. Sure you won’t be shreddin the fret board up, but as long as you can learn some chords, you can rock out in a band.

  11. @psgels‘s reply to me

    Well, have you ever watched Beck? Kyouki starts of knowing nothing about playing the guitar but he practices and slowly learns along the way. Eventually their band go to America and they play live in front of audiences. Its perfectly reasonable that K-On could do such a thing in the span of 26 episodes.

    I do agree with KyoAni insistance on doing these moe moe shows is silly, but they do make them good, this looks to be a lot more accessible than say Lucky Star which was all aimed at otaku, I would rather KyoAni do some kind of good action anime like Full Metal Panic, or something new altogether, but this will do for now.

  12. Come on people, psgels is one of the most positive-thinking commentators of anime, so give him a break when he expresses his negative opinions. It would be sad he just uniformly praised whatever comes up.

    We don’t need to always have the same tastes, and often it’s actually more informative to read comments from people with a different take on things.

  13. “My beef with Kyoani is that they could use their talents for so many interesting concepts, and yet they continue to just go with the same tried and true formula.”

    Yet BEETRAIN rock, lol?

  14. Westlo: sure, every studio has a favourite in a particular genre. My problem with Kyoani is though, that they don’t try anything whatsoever outside of their comfort zone. If they’d attempt a Blade of the Immortal once in a while, I’m positive I wouldn’t be complaining about them.

  15. Well I just thought K-On was pretty average. I didn’t really hate it, but I didn’t really care much about it either. Real issue is with the lead. Girl seems to be as sharp as a sponge.

    Just a personal feeling in that she felt fairly annoying to me. Maybe she’ll grow a bit, but will likely stay as the same general type of person.

    Will probably keep an eye on the show since the musical aspect could be nice. Besides there are worse ways to kill some time :).

  16. I have to admit that K-On is nothing special, but I laughed a lot while watching it and I think this show will stand out by its humour here, it was incredibly funny to watch , especially the main character doesn’t seem to have grown up the slightest bit since her childhood ( since the kindergarten, it’s almost like a four year-old girl were plunged in high-school like, like she had undergone some kind of transformation or just were asleep all this time ( well,she did say her principal hobby was to lay in bed after all), but it really is a show to have a good laugh , so I’m definitely going to follow it!

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