Author: psgels

Some Quick First Impressions: Galilei Donna, Samurai Flamenco and Ore no Nounai Sentakushi ga, Gakuen Love Come o Zenryoku de Jama Shiteiru

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Galilei Donna

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are the descendants of Galileo Galilei.
Aah, this will be one of those series: the type of anime with lots of ambition, with a very short airing length and a very inconsistent execution. Lots of stuff is added, some which works really well and others which are… questionable. Sometimes they work out quite well, like with Gatchaman Crowds, at others they bomb horribly, like what happened with Fractale. Galilei Donna has tons of ideas. I like how it tries to have a diverse cast: the main characters are a middle schooler, a high schooler and a college student, and it managed to really show how all of them are in different stages of their lives. On top of that their parents also play a really big role in this show and they too are unique. The action is the same: at its worst it’s badly animated CG fluff. At its best it’s a really engaging thriller with intense animation. The characters? At their best they really are likeable and engaging. At their worst we have a middle schooler piloting all sorts of crazy mecha. The plot of this episode was the same. But here is the thing: I’d much rather have this, than a show that doesn’t have any ambition at all. In the past I have shown a ton of support for these kinds of series and I will continue to do that, because experiments like these are just so interesting to watch. After all, the more ambitious you are, the more things that can go wrong. Screw playing safe! Let’s go crazy!
OP: This would have been the best OP of the season if it just ran for half a minute longer. Now the song just ends in the middle of the best part.
ED: A pretty standard ED.
Potential: 80%

Samurai Flamenco

Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets this weirdo who wants to be a superhero.
This series has the potential to become something really special. It’s an original story, probably 22 episodes long. To me, this series stands at the top of the season, along with Kyousogiga and Yozakura Quartet, though unlike those two it’s much more grounded into reality. The thing that’s immediately noticeable here is how good the two main characters are: both adults with jobs and lives and histories. And the chemistry between them is just hilarious: the two of them fit together really well. But here’s what really sold me on this series: the way it deconstructs the superhero genre. Forget those fancy promo images that this series advertised itself with. That’s just a show within a show. This series is about a cop, and a wannabe superhero, and this episode really proceeded to drive home that you should leave heroism to the people who actually know their stuff. Within one episode it already managed to drive hom a great theme and message. Let alone what it can do with 22.
OP: The best OP song of the season I guess. Not like the competition was particularly great though…
ED: Generic poppy ED with the girls of the show who didn’t even make an appearance yet.
Potential: 90%

Ore no Nounai Sentakushi ga, Gakuen Love Come o Zenryoku de Jama Shiteiru

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets hit by a girl falling from the sky.
Well. This series was one of the biggest surprises I have had in years while doing these first impressions. And I’m not kidding. The premise of this series is a horrible excuse to make a cute girl fall from the sky and do the bidding of the main character. It looks and sounds exactly like your umpth obnoxious harem show. Every single character is your obnoxious harem cliché that has been done to death, and all of the female characters have these annoying squeaky voices. This should have been utterly horrible. This should have been a contender with Yuusha Blahblah and Walkure Romanze for the worst show of the season. And yet the creators gave it the best rendition that it possibly could have had with these horrible ingredients. This episode had me in stitches. I laughed so hard at times. I’m not going to spoil why. I just applaud this show for doing what I thought was impossible.
OP: FANSERVICE
ED: Live action used well? In a series like this?
Potential: 80%

Kyousogiga – 01

by psgels, posted in Kyousogiga

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)

Some Quick First Impressions: Blazblue – Alter Memory, Tokyo Ravens and Yowamushi Pedal

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Blazblue – Alter Memory

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has a powerful right hand of doom.
This season sure likes its “really sad flashbacks in the middle of fire”-cliches. This was like, the fourth show that had one? – Anyway, silly trends aside: I’m blank on this one. This show has some action scenes (which weren’t bad by the way), but it’s supposed to be a game adaptation. This did not feel like a game. It also didn’t really feel like the creators were stuffing way too much or too little in the first episode: it’s a perfectly fine episode to start off with with a lot of hints for the future of the plot and the set-up for the characters and the setting (which have a few neat ideas in them by the way). It jumped from scene to scene, but in actually a comprehensible way, rather than making it seem like the story was flying through everything. The characters also have slightly more charm than what I expected from a game adaptation as well. It at times made no sense, but that too wasn’t in a bad way: this episode raised a lot of questions that all look like they can be answered as the show goes along. It’s also good to have a main character as an adult (please tell me that this guy is at least older than 18…). The thing here is that most of this episode was bland, but I saw small hints of interesting stuff like mentioned above. And then there was that preview for the next episode that I happened to watch. A hint, or just a cry of despair?
OP: Quite a standard OP song.
ED: Nice art, bland song.
Potential: 75%

Tokyo Ravens

Short Synopsis: Our lead character can be an Omnyouji.
This one turned out a bit different from what I expected. I thought that this would be another one of those immature shows about a bunch of kids fighting with onmyouji powers. And while this series is indeed a show that features a bunch of teenagers fighting with omnyouji powers, there was a surprising amount of time dedicated to drama, and pretty decent drama at that. You know that with all the fanservice shows, this has been the first one to feature an actual kiss? And there isn’t even much other fanservice in this episode, with most of it being at least a bit more subtle than a horny horse with a craving for skirts. The strange thing with this series is that it knows that it has cliches, but it dances around them, instead of addresing them directly. Well, this episode did at least. I’m not sure whether the creators intend to do that for the entire series.
OP: Not bad, but still not the great ED I’ve been waiting for.
ED: Nice artistic direction there.
Potential: 75%

Yowamushi Pedal

Short Synopsis: Our lead character likes anime.
Why does anime have this fixation with idiots? I mean, isn’t it much more fun to watch actually smart people do stuff? What makes things even worse is that most idiots in anime are also mind-numbingly stupid. Yowamushi Pedal: I found the experienced bikers much more interesting to watch: someone who has been training for years, with a love and passion for the sport, held back by his own pride and having this really good rival as a roadblock. But no, the main character is this kid who lives entirely in his own world, refuses to think straight and who just happens to be really good at cycling. This really is the prime example of a series with the “bad main character”-syndrome, because the rest of the cast: I don’t mind them, and they seem interesting from what we’ve seen of them. Even the female lead, even though she’s held back a lot by her cliche of being the token female in a sports series who can’t compete and therefore just ends up being a manager. Is it that weird to have both a male and a female team? Despite these criticism though, I do have one positive thing to say about this series: I would not be surprised if this was inspired by Kuroko no Basuke, but where Kuroko did not motivate me to keep watching, this episode of Yowamushi Pedal did. Damn you cliff-hanger!
OP: Generic shounen opening with lots of modern speedlines that don’t fit their context.
ED: Generic ending. Come on. Please. Give me at least one great opening or ending this season. Just one that dares to be different and unique.
Potential: 70%

Pokemon: The Origin Review – 75/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews

Normally I try to avoid spoilers with these reviews, but screw it, it’s Pokemon. Pokemon The Origin is a bomb of nostalgia. If you haven’t played Pokemon Red, Blue or Green, then you will not enjoy this one slight bit. This really is made as pure undilluted fanservice for the fans of the first games. Pokemon was the first anime that I watched on Dutch television that made me aware of the existance of anime. Pokemon Yellow was the game that had me hooked, more than any other game when I was younger. So yeah, I am a fan, Pokemon holds an irreplaceable part in my childhood. And biased.

Here’s the interesting bit about this OVA: it’s got so many things that the television-series did really badly. And yet at the same time, it’s got some huge flaws that the TV-series was better at.

Let me start with the positives: finally, after more than a decade of pokemon, we’ve got it: a Pokemon anime without Ash. Team Rocket is present, but Jesse, James and Meowth are completely gone. in fact, the only regular characters who do return are Giovanni, Professor Oak, and Brock and Misty as Gym Leaders. This is what I’ve been waiting for: the pokemon universe is open to so many different stories and interpretations, so it sucks that it always has to be the same thing. I gave up on it years ago for a reason.

Next up: the length. At four episodes of just 20 minutes, finally Pokemon has come in bite-size chunks. The TV-series was absolutely notorious for wasting time, for running for way too long and including so many pointless stories that dilluted the experience. In these four episodes the creators picked the best parts of the game and brought that to animation.

All of the characters, in terms of acting at least improved from what we’ve seen of them: Giovanni actually has a personality, Brock stopped being the womanizer and now is just a gym leader, and all of the pokemon stopped trying to look and sound cute. They behave much more like animals. Heck, there was one brief appearance of Pikachu, and somehow the creators managed to give it mouse noises. That is one thing that I did not expect them to get past the marketing machine.

Now, the bad stuff: you obviously can’t stuff one entire game in four episodes. The solution of the creators is to have Red recap the things that happened off-screen. Great for fans of the game, but anyone not familiar will just scratch their head, wondering what the hell is going on. The only single reason I tolerate this is because it’s pokemon: any other show attempting this would have not worked at all. Adaptations need to stand alone, not give the message of “you need to check out the game/manga/whatever if you want the complete story”.

What also stood out was that this OVA became quite a good example of the difference in adaptations between today and fifteen years ago: adaptations today follow much closer to their original source material. On one hand this creates less obnoxious filler, but on the other hand this also limits the creators when they take over something stupid, or something that doesn’t work. This stands out especially in game adaptations.

There’s something bizarre in the entire game meta being visible in these OVAs, like pokemon have life bars now, they talk about level. People hand out sics with moves on them. Oh, and the battles themselves also become really weird because of this where the main focus is adhering to the game rules, rather than common sense. Take the fight against Brock for example: oh yeah, it may follow the game’s rules and all, but what we saw there was the equivalent of a big tank being drop-kicked by a hamster. Pikachu’s victory against the Onyx actually made sense. You can give the original series a lot of flack, but at least they looked at the different powers and used their heads, whereas in The Origins you have a Charizard whose tail keeps burning even when he’s underwater.

The characters also really suffered, and the creators I think made the explicit decision not to flesh them out or give them much depth. They get all their depth from the nostalgia with the games. This worked particularly strange with Giovanni, who behaves really weird throughout the parts he’s featured in. Heck, he loses to a kid and just abolishes his entire organization, even though losing to a kid just a few minutes earlier did nothing to him. But yeah, this entive OVA fails to make any ounce of sense. The original series has more logic in it than what we saw here.

But here’s the thing: When I first learned of this OVA, I imagined that it would be this big budgetted OVA, or at least something really solid. This was everything but solid, and the animation budget in particular wasn’t that impressive. This leads me to believe that this was a simple experiment: a test to see whether it’s worth it to also cater to the older fans of Pokemon. A pilot, if you will. And that idea, I really support.

Pokemon deserves to have some stories in it that target a different demographic than the usual kids. There are plenty of adult players who would like to see a more mature storyline animated, I would definitely see a market for that. For future experiments, I would really suggest: try sometihng standalone. Don’t depend on the games. Make sense. Take yourself seriously. Have a main character who isn’t a kid. I know that the last point is really stretching it, but hey you made Pikachu talk like a mouse, so apparently you do have freedom.
One-Sentence Review: A nostalgia bomb and not much more; do not watch if you haven’t played Pokemon Red, Blue or Green.
Suggestions:
– Pokemon, The Indigo League Season

Some Quick First Impressions: Unbreakable Machine Doll, Non Non Biyori and Arpeggio of Blue Steel – Ars Nova

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Unbreakable Machine Doll

Short Synopsis: Our lead character’s girlfriend is a magic fighting doll.
Wel… it’s not the worst thing of this season. Its plot at the very least is guided by “some” logic. Not much, but I’ve seen worse! I still see no hope in this one though, for the usual reasons: bland cast, bland premise, no hints whatsoever that it can get some good things out of its characters nor plot, and the action itself also has nothing to write home about. Beyond that, the characters remain really stereotypical without much soul, and all of the action scenes make no sense whatsoever. I know this series uses magic and all, but even then there are some thing sthat you just need to hide better. To me this feels like the creators were just animating it for the heck of it without really spending time on thinking how to make it work or how to polish it. Moving on.
ED: Bad song, bland animation.
Potential: 0%

Non Non Biyori

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters live in the country.
Quite unexpectedly, Non Non Biyori was a huge nostalgic trip to my childhood for me. At times it lost itself a bit in its comedy, or attempt to be heart-warming, but at its best points, this episode just forcefully dived into my head when I was a child. I personally grew up in the countryside, so I can really relate to some of the things they talked about, like not locking your doors, having small schools, or how if you drive 50 km per hour, you will reach 50 kilometers after an hour (shut up, I was young!). My point is: this show captures being a kid more than any other series of the recent years about just a bunch of kids growing up and nothing more. It doesn’t aim at the complete picture, but it doesn’t lay things too thick or too thin. It doesn’t focus on the darker parts of being a kid, just the random ones and with that it doesn’t lay things on too thick, which is a problem that most other series of its caliber have; even Tamayura wasn’t really realistic due to how forced its drama was at times. And yet despite that, I had trouble to not fall asleep.
OP: Not bad. I like the singer of this, but I forgot her name.
ED: Oh boy. Next time try to leave the singing to people who can actually do it…
Potential: 75%

Arpeggio of Blue Steel – Ars Nova

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to command a cute girl. And a submarine.
Arpeggio is cell shaded 3D CG. Okay, I did not expect that. The creators did well in their attempts to hide this… but it still stands out and the animation is in this uncanny valley in which the characters all have these creepy stares. Now, if the rest of the series was good, then this could be perfectly excused… but I’ve got a big “meh” impression from all of it. Yeah, the action is decent, but nothing special. The characters are virtually nonexistent aside from the lead couple, and they… just interact with each other. Nothing more nothing less. The story is the standard Yamato-inspired series: humanity is screwed until a single traitor from the bad guys joins the good guys giving them superior technology that kicks ass. There’s nothing that really stands out in any way here. If you want a good series about submarines: watch either Blue Submarine No6 or Fushigi no Umi no Nadia. This one… this episode was bland and I saw no hints about it not being bland in the future.
ED: I assume that this will be the OP for this series, and it’s just copied and pasted from other OPs. Seriously, what the hell happened to the awesome OPs here? Even the best OPs this season just stood out due to animation. Gone are the openings based on great ideas or with a strong artistic vision behind them. What gives?
Potential: 50%

Some Quick First Impressions: Yozakura Quartet – Hana no Uta, Gingitsune and Walkure Romanze

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Yozakura Quartet – Hana no Uta

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is human.
Yozakura Quartet, congratulations. You have beaten the entire Autumn Season so far. No other series came close to the creativity you showed in this episode. The characters were incredibly likable, the soundtrack is fantastic, and the animation. Oh god the animation! There are plenty well animated series this season, but this show really takes this one step beyond. This episode featured a festival for example. Take a look at all of the characters in the background: the creators made sure to give all of them a unique look, and they tried to animate all of them as much as possible. Kill La Kill stood out, but it did so in just one way and one style. Kyoukai no Kanata just had a ton of inbetween frames that brought its characters to life. This series however really puts thought into its animation: it toys around with camera angles, it actually moves its camera dynamically, characters physically interact with each other and their environment beyond just swinging swords, punching or firing beams, and it’s all incredibly diverse: the animators experiment with a ton of different stuff here. Especially the second half of this episode was chock full of neat ideas, experiments and really creative movements. There perhaps isn’t as much animation as with the OVAs, but that was to be expected, and there is still plenty to like. This really is a series that excels at showing what’s going on. The only other series that can even get close to it will probably be Kyousogiga.
OP: Oh, the animation. The awesome animation!
Potential: 100%

Gingitsune

Short Synopsis: Our lead character can talk to a fox spirit.
Too… many… great series… this season! I was hoping that Gingitsune would just be one of those forgettable youkai series without much ambition, but no. They just had to make this one incredibly charming series. It’s still a really simple show: a girl suddenly lives with her father at a shrine and suddenly she sees a fox spirit who can talk with a god. She’s the only one who can, and so she becomes its spokesperson. That’s all, nothing special, and similar things have been done many times before. But that fox. I LOVE that fox. He’s all sorts of adorable. He’s this big cuddly teddybear who is this old fart and suddenly realizes he has to be commanded around by this bratty teenager. He’s just wonderful to watch and he synergizes with all characters he’s able to interact with. The female lead, she’s not bad either. She’s bratty, but she too is developed and she learns of her mistakes. She’s engaging enough as a female lead and as the spokesperson of that awesome fox. I know my taste is weird!
OP: Strange animation choices, but I see here enough hints to know that this show will have enough material for 13 episodes.
ED: Awww.
Potential: 85%

Walkure Romanze

Short Synopsis: Our lead character likes horses.
I… just…. what did I just watch? Sigh, dear Walkure Romanze: if you want to have fanservice, fine. Find some way to add it naturally or something. Do not throw in a horse that has a craving for young girl’s skirts. I’d really wish that I didn’t have to tell you this, but unfortunately these series still exist. This entire episode felt like a slap to the face to be honest. The entire setting doesn’t make any sense, as it seems entirely devoted to jousting, and nothing else, and it throws in this inconsequential romance subplot featuring an entire cast of characters with the IQs that many horses can beat easily. The horse was the most bizarre part, due to how well it was drawn at times. Heck, the creators even emoted this animal, with the result that it looked even more rapey than it already was. This really is one to pass up here…
OP: Bland in every way.
ED: Yeah yeah, just give any more obvious hints that this is going to be a harem by putting the entire female cast in wedding dresses…
Potential: 0%

Some Quick First Impressions: Little Busters Refrain, Phi Brain Season 3 and Meganebu

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Little Busters Refrain

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a high schooler.
Yes! Yes! Now this is much more like it! This is what I’ve been waiting for. You know, for as bad as Little Busters was at times, there was one thing that it always did really well: friendship. It sounds cheesy, but it managed to create this tight group of friends who spend their high school days together and have a really tight emotional bond with each other, and this time it’s a reasonably sized one, rather than the usual four or five that you see everywhere. That point was used really well in this first episode of Refrain, as it had a bit of silliness and drama that played off it surprisingly well. There are bad characters. Good lord, there are bad characters. But thankfully we’re all done with their arcs now and we can start to focus on the good ones now.
OP: Lots and lots of hints that things are gonna end bad.
ED: The entire episode was chock full of hints that things were going downhill. So why such a cheerful ED here? It’s not even a good song.
Potential: 80%

Phi Brain Season 3

Short Synopsis: Our lead character solves puzzles.
I’m not going to deny: I thought this episode was awesome. It’s finally done something that it should have done long ago in its second season, but never got around to: focus on Jin, Kaitou’s mentor, who was one of the most interesting characters of the first season. Finally they’re taking his development further, and it seems like he will be a central character in this third season, as opposed to being completely nonexistent in the second. Like the second season, this start again was quite strong with great character-designs and atmosphere, plus the characters work together really well again. HOWEVER, I KNOW THIS SERIES. Please, Phi Brain: make good use of your time for once. The first season was excused to experiment a bit, but not anymore. Actually spend your time well developing your characters, and make the conflict worthwile. Don’t use such a stupid motivation in which characters just can’t think straight. It’s very unusual for a show of your caliber to get so many episodes. Now actually use them!
OP: Very polished. Perhaps not as good as the first OP, but still works quite well.
ED: The song is a bit too bright and cheerful here…
Potential: 75%

Meganebu

Short Synopsis: Our lead character wears glasses.
“Well, there are a ton of different series coming out today, so let me just quickly watch this random bishie show and get things over with so that I can focus on other stuff… holy crap what the hell am I watching?!” – Seriously, just the title “Meganebu”, or glasses club, is not enough to prepare you for what this series is. This isn’t just a series about a bunch of guys who started a club about glasses. This is about a bunch of morons whose entire universe revolves around the damn things. It’s incredibly camp and ridiculously cheesy, not to mention completely pointless. This show is bonkers, of the kind of “so bad it’s good”. Also for some reason it has very creative camera angles.
ED: Lots of cheese and bright colours.
Potential: 20%

Some Quick First Impressions: Hajime no Ippo – Third Season, White Album 2 and Teekyu Season 3

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Hajime no Ippo – Third Season

Short Synopsis: Our lead character boxes.
For this new season I did wonder: what can the creators still add, after nearly 100 episodes. Then this episode started off with a story about Ippo’s past and nearly made me cry. Hajime no Ippo at this time is a project that has been going on for nearly ten years now, and it’s interesting to see how it evolved over time. This third series is a little less pimped up than the second season (less shiny, and the soundtrack is not as over the top), but the boxing matches still are really well done and full of adrenaline. The strength of this show lies in its side characters, of which there was very little in this episode, but there were plenty of hints for things to come. One thing that did strike me here is how fast the pacing was: the episode went from backstory, to a new challenger to already fighting this challenger, without much of the preparation work that we’ve usually seen from this series: the challenger got like, three lines of introduction before he started fighting. Let’s see whether this is a trend for the new season, or something purposefully needed for this fight.
OP: This actually looks gorgeous!
ED: One of the few ‘running’-EDs that actually work.
Potential: 90%

White Album 2

Short Synopsis: Our lead character dates an idol.
Before I start talking about the actual episode, I want to talk about this series’ pedigree. The first two seasons of White Album (or the adaptation of the first game, explaining why this series is called White Album 2, even though it’s the third season) were made by completely different people: a crew from Seven Arcs brought it to life, and for that they decided to go into a completely unique direction that challenged the way we look at harem and idol series. It was incredibly annoying, yet so satisfying in the end. If you’re a fan of that style: forget about it for White Album 2. Now, the director: Seiya Numata. I really am a big fan of his, as an animator. He has this kind of energy that you hardly find with any other animator out there, not to mention that he is completely crazy. His series and episodes are always incredibly fun to watch. Now, if you are also a fan of him: forget about it for White Album 2. It’s not crazy in any single way, and neither is the animation very impressive. Satelite in general seems to be a Studio where the general rule is that the more money they throw at it, the better it looks, without much focus on the talents of individual animators. Having said that though, this series does set itself apart from most other high school romances, in the way that it has an actually sensible and intelligent male lead. And with that I don’t mean the snarky kind who sprouts quirky one-liners that come out of a novel, but it’s someone who uses his head, he’s great at organizing, and connecting people. The female lead also sounds like she didn’t have her head lobotomized, which is always good. It’s not perfect though, because especially the minor cast still consists out of one-dimensional idiots, but it’s something. This is a series that takes itself entirely serious, with no comedy whatsoever, however you can see Satelight’s love for music in this return quite obviously, and that too works quite well.
Potential: 80%

Teekyu, Season 3

Short Synopsis: Our lead character are supposed to play tennis.
Ooh, Teekyu. You still don’t make an ounce of sense, and I love you for it. At the point of season 3 you still don’t show any signs of slowing down, andthis episode brought us all sorts of randomness from ski lift to chihuahuas. This series still consists out of a bunch of talented animats just having random fun and playing around, and it also helps that the jokes in this series that DO make sense are actually quite good. I’m not that bitter that this was extended to a third season.
OP: What the hell man?
Potential: 75%

Some Quick First Impressions: Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai, Ace of Diamond and Strike the Blood

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Sekai de Ichiban Tsuyoku Naritai!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character “wrestles” in public.
What can I say? This show is just outright porn. Karuta gets Chihayafuru, Go gets Hikaru no Go, Football gets Giant Killing, Shougi gets Shion no OU. And then wresling gets to do with this vapid excuse of a show. Har har, it’s funny because it looks like they’re having sex! I mean, what’s there to say about it? I could spare some words about the whole set-up perhaps, because that also is just an incredible sellout. With the premise of this series being hot girls having sex with each other under the pretense of wrestling, the creators had to find some excuse to get enough of them in there. Their solution? Idols, making this even more of an insult to the sport. The female lead is basically incredibly stupid and ignorant which leads her to just have a match with a professional wrestler without knowing anything at all about the sport, in the middle of a huge audience. In a way this is a good symbol at how the idol business has spiralled out of control at this point, and how idols have forced their way into places that they totally don’t belong with their cameos, just because they’re famous and that their loyal fanbase will basically just support them no matter what, to the dismay of people who don’t have anything to do with them. But you know the thing with parodies, right, Sekai? It’s not a parody if you’re just adhering to the things you’re supposed to make fun of.
OP: Bland song, bland visuals that just show a bunch of bad wrestling scenes.
ED: Just reverting back to the idol part isn’t going to save you here, guys.
Potential: 0%

Ace of Diamond

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a pitcher.
So, did this series live up to the incredibly high standards that the baseball genre has set in the past? Nah, it’s just a Major-clone, and not really a good one at that. The creators here need to lookup the meaning of “laying it on too thick”, because that was exactly what they were doing in this episode. There is a ton of overacting, but the biggest problem is that it’s got a Marty Stu as a main character, as much as this show tries to hide it. He may make mistakes, but this series always points at him as being right, despite being a brat and making a ton of mistakes, and you also have the strange paradox in which the guy really values teamwork above anything, yet stands at the center of everything. It’s like “teamwork is awesome! As long as I’m the center”. The only redeeming factor here is how this series showed the difference between small baseball teams and the top tier of teams and it at least slightly tried to stay away from the “underdogs good established players bad” cliche. It nearly failed at even that though, but thankfully that catcher and manager ended up saving it.
OP: Generic cheesy opener
ED: The song is generic, but at least the art style is interesting
Potential: 30%

Strike the Blood

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a vampire who threatens to nknowingly destroy the world.
This turned out to be another one of the bad series this season, unfortunately. At first it looked like it might have potential, but there is one thing that really holds it back: its chronic lack of creativity whatsoever. This entire episode was cobbled up with cliches from other stories without any attempt to turn them into something new. Everything here was done before thousands of times, which made for a really, really boring first episode. And they’re not even the good cliches, but the lazy cliches, varying from the riduclously complicated universe rules in order to give the main character special powers while at the same time making him just a normal guy, the way that a panty shot is the biggest source for interaction between the lead male and female, how an international police organization tasked with saving the earth sends a teenaged girl to do this mission, not to mention the amnesia, the generic setting that throws all sorts of monsters just together without any sort of cohesion, the “not any person could block my uber-attack”-cliche, the “I am so stupid that I have no idea that I suck at tracking people”-cliche, the “random assholes who assault a girl”-cliche, and of course the “really sad flashback in the middle of a fire”-cliche (Miss Monochrome did that too, you know). Add that all together and you have a really boring show.
ED: Generic fight scenes and music that was just copied and pasted.
Potential: 0%

Some Quick First Impressions: Log Horizon, Diabolik Lovers and Yuusha Blahblah

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Log Horizon

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is stuck in an MMORPG.
After .Hack and Sword Art Online, here comes the next series about people stuck in an MMORPG. What sets it aside from these two is that it by far takes itself the least serious. Of course there is a solid storyline behind it and all, but a lot of time in this episode was spent on wise-cracking jokes and characters acting quirky, or looking cool while trying to fight monsters. It is much lighter than Sword Art Online by not making an as big of a deal of what happens when you die, and it’s much less deep in its themes than .Hack//Sign was for example. There are still some issues of charcters taking certain things surprisingly serious, like an assassin who talks and acts like an honorable ninja that makes you wonder how she behaved in normal life…), but yeah if you like the banter between the characters then this can be quite fun. Unfortunately for me, that banter often annoyed me and the only good jokes were the ones it made about its setting, how it deconstructed some overused MMORPG cliches with its tongue in its cheek. Most of the jokes though are characters repeating their quirks over and over, and they’re not even funny quirks.
OP: Hilariously cheesy engrish. I did not expect an OP with this intensity, though.
ED: Aagh, and they still come with an ED that has been copied and pasted from every other generic ED out there.
Potential: 65%

Diabolik Lovers

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is stuck in a house full of vampires.
Ah, nearly forgot to check this one out because it aired a few weeks earlier than the rest of the series. Its episodes are only fifteen minutes long, so why not? Diabolik Lovers turned out to be… a really weird horror series. I’m not kidding, the entire premise of this show is that a girl enters a house full of six vampires who start assaulting her, all while looking incredibly creepy. This goes back to the strange amount of occurrences of rapey fantasies that you see all over anime and manga, which I still don’t quite get. But yeah, the bishies are hot and mysterious. The big problem here is that every character so far is a one-dimensional stereotype without any hints of more, so this one definitely isn’t going to win any awards. Good soundtrack, though.
ED: Actually not a bad ED for a horror series.
Potential: 0%

Yuusha Blahblah

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a hero.
Oh my god. What the hell was that? I originally wasn’t really looking out for this one or anything, but I was not prepared for how phenominally BAD the direction of this series would be. I mean holy crap, the director of htis show did just about everything wrong. You really have to try to be this awful. From the outside it doesn’t look that way, because the series does seem to have quite a big budget, but here is the thing: you do not simply assign all of your inbetweeners to your boob shots. Seriously, the animation in this series is crap, aside from the close up fanservice shots, and it’s so incredibly thickly laid on that it’s not even funny. Either way this is an incredibly sexist series with some of the dumbest female characters out there, but beyond that the acting is incredibly wooden. This show fails to introduce anything, it fails to set any kind of standards for its world, it randomly jumps from one scene to the other without any lead-in and it doesn’t make any attempt at comedic delivery. Add that to the uncanny ability to focus on a girl’s boobs or ass and you’ve got one of the worst directed episodes of the year, especially considering how much budget went into this and was just wasted. The bad thing is that this director is directing TWO series at the same time this season. Who the hell found that a good idea?!
ED: The only way to get any lazier than this ED is to just not record a song for it.
Potential: 0%