Some Quick First Impressions: Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai, Endro! and Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai

Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai

Short Synopsis: Two student council members attempt to manipulate each other into confessing their love for the other.

Aidan’s review:
After the disappointment that was Grand Blue, I was fully worried that Kaguya being another quite comedy focused manga would be diluted in the transition. Thankfully to some great direction it seems this show has nailed everything that made the manga so enjoyable. I have a particular fondness for the opening which portrays Kaguya and the president’s battle for love like some James Bond spy thriller and the way the anime plays up their interactions as mind games like those between the worlds greatest detective and Kira is part of want makes things work so damn well. Coupled with the narrator hyping their misunderstandings or power plays into highly dramatic explosions make the overall idiotic nature of their dilemma all the more palatable. Provided this can keep up the fun and not let the premise grow stale then this could well be a show to keep an eye on this season.
Potential: 85%

Wooper’s review:
Non-manga reader reporting for first impressions duty. The thing that excited me most about Kaguya-sama coming into this episode wasn’t the series’ reputation, but the fact that it shared both a director and a lead writer with Rakugo Shinjuu, one of my favorite anime in recent years. I wasn’t expecting quite that level of excellence from Kaguya, but my hopes were still high, and this premiere actually met them. Shinichi Omata’s background with Shaft really shone through here, with comedic cutaways and exaggerated facial expressions heightening the ridiculousness of each segment. The idea of two hormonal geniuses trying to trick each other into making the first move is a novel one, but it’s not a golden goose all on its own – you need strong direction and editing for their monologues not to feel stupid or tedious. Just as important are the performances from the voice actors, who have to sell their characters as both prodigies and lovestruck teens. Plenty of praise will be paid to Aoi Koga’s Kaguya in the coming months, especially since she’s a relatively new VA, but everybody else pulls their weight as well. Yutaka Aoyama’s sly, almost paralyzing delivery is instantly recognizable in the narrator role, and Konomi Kohara strikes a perfect balance between likability and airheadedness, which mirrors Kaguya’s relationship with her character, Chika. If I have one complaint about the series, it’s the art style used for the furniture in the student council room, which seems to employ some strange combination of cell shading and thickened outlines that results in a highly unnatural look. One has to imagine that a lot of scenes will be set in that room, but if everything else about the show stays this good, I’ll have no reason to complain.
Potential: 80%

Endro!

Short Synopsis: A demon lord is sent back in time after being defeated by four heroes, and must work to sabotage their studies as their teacher.

Wooper’s review:
This was pretty cute! The animation was steady all the way through, the fantasy-inspired backgrounds had some care put into them, and the characters all have a sheen to their designs that kept me interested in how they’d look in the next scene. TV anime in general seems to have hit a point where even a solid, workmanlike production is big news, so congrats to Endro for looking like somebody cared about how it turned out. More important than its looks, though, are the series’ playful spirit and cheeky commentary on game mechanics. Not all of the humor worked for me, but there’s a streak of self-awareness running through the script that makes the on-screen text scrolls and discussion of RPG classes feel fun, rather than stupid. This season’s Shield Hero positively reeks of THIS IS JUST LIKE A VIDEO GAME-itis, but Endro functions a bit more organically. For example, it ties its main character’s wielding of a club into her obsession with heroism, which has left her classless and stuck with a suboptimal weapon; despite this setback, she cluelessly maintains that she’ll become a hero if she has a positive outlook. This is a lot more tolerable than a virtual display popping up and preventing a shield-bearing character from equipping a sword because they are a shield-bearing character, which they process with zero personality. There are a couple other jokes that earned a chuckle from me, but one of them in particular works much better if you’re not anticipating it, so I’ll cut things off here. If you like cute girl shows and game-inspired settings, consider giving Endro a shot. You might regret it, but you’re already watching seasonal anime, so how much worse can your life get?
Potential: 50%

Mario’s review:
In general, I don’t mind Endro. Watching this, I feel like it attempts to do sort of the same thing as Tantei Opera Milky Holmes. They both twist around the tropes while never really take these seriously. While Milky Holmes is more parody, this one just contents with the characters having fun time and going for an adventure all over again. It has that moe designs (even down to the cute loli devil), but so far it delivers its jokes with grace and I would say it’s a above-bar CGDCT offering of the season. The main concept seem to be the devil Maou tries her best to stop this hapless students from becoming heroes, but fall for their charms instead. I have no problem with that and if it still has that much wits (my favorite: the mage “predicts” the weather forecast) and maintains its bright settings, I’m all in to follow it.
Potential: 30%

Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai

Short Synopsis: A crew of female pilots protect their employer from enemy fighters in a frontier setting.

Mario’s review:
The most remembered aspect viewers gonna get out of this episode is its technical aspect. There’s not much narrative to begin with since a huge chunk of this episode concentrates on the aerial combat. On that front I’m quite happy with what I saw so far. The combats are mostly well choreographed that you can mostly follow what happening on-screen (I do have some troubles recognizing the planes though), there’s a great attention to piloting details, for example it spends proper time for us to see how they do a start-up procedure. The camera angle (which sometimes adopt first person POV like in a game) and the sound designs are other stand outs. The thing that I’m a bit worried about, is that these aerial combat overwhelmed the characters so far as we don’t know much about them. In addition, the characters’ CG models might be a hit or miss. I enjoy the quick, natural dialogues in these first few scenes and I do like the cowboy settings so I hope the show can give those justice in later episodes.
Potential: 40%

Wooper’s review:
This series missed my strike zone by a wide margin, since it’s all about planes. More than half of the episode is spent depicting a dogfight between 3DCG aircraft, with particular attention paid to sound design – the groaning of their metal frames as they make harsh aerial maneuvers, the pinging sound of bullets ripping through their bodies, and the sputtering of their engines come to mind. I was listening to the episode through a set of nice speakers, but unfortunately, even that level of immersion wasn’t enough to keep me interested. The decision to center the opening scene around a dude in the middle of a romantic dry spell is likely to blame for my lack of involvement, because his squad of freelance pilots is quickly wiped out in the dogfight. Getting to know the girls who are, y’know, the stars of the show might have been nice, but the only tidbit I picked up was that one of them really likes pancakes. I can admire the decision not to dump a ton of info about the show’s (seemingly alternate) universe in the first episode, but go too far in the other direction and you end up with something like this. Luckily, the closing moments of the episode seem to promise a more grounded second effort, so I might give it another try and see whether the characters make an impression in a different atmosphere (pun intended).
Potential: 40%