Chousoku Henkei Gyrozetter
Short Synopsis: Our lead character just got his driver’s lisence.
Before you write this off immediately: this series is written by Dai Sato, directed by Shinji Takamatsu, and has its music composed by Naoki Sato. There’s talent behind this, yo. So did they actually use it, or did this become the mother of all sell-outs? Yeah, pretty much the latter, this was basically just a glorified car commercial whose only merit is its ridiculous premise. I mean usually with these kinds of mecha series, it’s relatively easy to suspend your disbelief because you know, they’re giant humanoid robots. In this series you have 8-year-olds driving cars like they’re pros. Yes, it’s as hilarious as it sounds. You also have to love the scene at the end of the episode, in which the big bad guy looks over his arsenal of identical evil cars, and they all start glowing with these evil head-lights. The rest of this episode was incredibly bland by the way. I wouldn’t bother with it.
OP: Cheesy shounen OP.
ED: Who found it a good idea to rip off the Precure EDs with robots!?
Potential: 10%
Liche Light Club
Short Synopsis: Our lead character kidnaps innocent boys.
Aww. I compiled my preview before finding out that this would just be a 2-minute short with minimal animation. You know, another one of those really bad flash shows. It’s a shame because with a full release this would have made for a killer anime. In its current form… it degenerated into bad SM-jokes. This is supposed to be a horror anime, but it exchanged all of that for jokes that all fall flat. It’s also got waaay to many characters for just episodes of two minutes. There were like 12 different characters, all of them had to be included with their own joke (which by the way also was their only defining character trait). So yeah… this one definitely should have been handed to an actual animation studio.
Potential: 10%
Kamisama Hajimemashita
Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets a supernatural bishie
Yes! Yes! This is more like it. I watched this right after Tonari no Kaibatsu-kun, and this episode just was better in every way. Fiunally, after such a long wait, a genuinely good shoujo romance has appeared. It’s about time. Akitaro Daichi‘s directing is as delightful as ever. And really: I already found Tonari no Kaibatsu-kun’s first episode to be quite funny, but this episode just blew it out of the water with its jokes, and it had me giggling uncontrollably through the entire episode. But what’s even more impressive is how well this was all combined with the drama: this show can go from funny to serious and back in an instant, to the point where there were quite a few scenes in which I was both laughing and feeling sorry for the lead female. The animation is also quite interesting: it’s simple where it needs to be, and fluid where it needs to be. This allowed the animators to create a very dynamic-looking series with quite a small budget.
OP: Quite a typical OP with so many close-ups of the lead female. Catchy song, too.
ED: An ED that actually flows quite seamlessly with the end of the episode. Been a while since we saw one of those, and it helps that it’s a pretty good song here.
Potential: 90%
The first few chapters this episode was adapted from are quite weak and…bad compared to the later chapters. I wasn’t impressed and judged it rather harshly until I read on. It got much better. (Nanami feeling like a blank slate in the beginning did not help.)
Won’t stop reminding me of Otome Youkai Zakuro, haha.
I knew you’d like this! This is one of the better shoujos I’ve read. At first I thought it would be generic, but the author manages to keep my attention throughout. Its such a delight to read and the characters (+ romance) are developed well. You should read the manga if you have time. There are over 80 chapters right now though lol
I haven’t seen the episode yet, but judging by your reaction I won’t be disappointed. This is another reason why I like to follow your blog – we have the same taste in shoujo. Your Saiunkoku Monogatari reviews got me here. 🙂
@Reese:Just reminded me I still need to see Sainkoku. I hope this one, that is Kamisamaa gets subtitled, its the show I’ve looked forward to most this season. I’ll be watching it raw though for this first episode as what this episode will cover is still fresh in my mind from the manga.
Werid, you’re usually pretty picky about the voice acting, the voice acting in this episode felt kind of wooden, like the they’re reading off
Now I see it. I was actually quite surprised that anyone would adapt Litchi Hikari Club as a tv series, from what I saw that manga is quite macabre, extremely dark and very explicit.
I guess expecting Litchi Hikari Club actually getting a full anime was too much, though it still was quite dissapointing to find that it was going to be adapted into two minute shorts with flash animation.
not that it’s any indication, but Haiyore! Nyaruko-san was a flash anime before it became an actual anime
with litchi hikari screwing over horrendously, I’m worried about what will happen to aku no hana…
I knew Gyrozetter wasn’t going I hit ou off right like any toy ommercials. But you have to give them credit for (having the balls to) robots doing a cutsie dance. I dont care at all for Liche. But from your Screencaps, it looks like a bad slideshow
Noooo…! And I was looking forward to Liche Light Club so much as well… sigh… how can you turn something that looked and sounded so interesting in something like this?
What’s the point of these cheap flash series, anyway?
Shouldn’t they, if anything at all, be reserved for the very, VERY little kids? oh man! I’m so disappointed right now, I thought that it could be the next hidden gem of the season… sigh… sad.
It was announced before that it’s going to be comedic shorts.
http://natalie.mu/comic/news/74212
But it seems that it was overlooked plus there’s a lack of PR. I mean, there wasn’t even a trailer just before this one was released.
Anyway, I think this is actually for those who are fans of the manga and the play.