Short Synopsis: Casshern ends up at a small refugee village of robots.
Highlights: Surprisingly solid.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
As for the shows I’m not blogging (as usual, this isn’t really about “is this good?”, but “do I feel like writing about it every single week?):
– I almost wanted to blog Tales of the Abyss, but then Mouryou no Hako and the 12-year-old girl who strangely was a guardian convinced me not to for now.
– Hearing “urusai urusai urusai” once was enough to convince me to never go near Toradora again.
– Hyakko is funny, but the characters feel a bit flat.
So, basically because of the large amount of series that are continuing from previous seasons, and Tytania (the one that won my little contest, a month ago), I only have the room to blog five new series. If Tales of the Abyss would have aired during a lighter season, I definitely would have ended up blogging it. There’s also the matter that three series that I’m planning to blog haven’t even aired yet (and because I’ve only heard a few very vague details of what they’re about, they still can utterly disappoint me), so who knows?
In any case, even though I didn’t like the first episode, I’m going to blog Casshern. Even though the main character is a bit emo, there’s a lot of good stuff in this series. It probably is one of the most solid series to have aired this season, and the slow pacing contributes to that. But what I especially like is the different variety of robots that Casshern runs into, and how they’re trying to live within the mess he caused them. The concept of robots is a bit strange here, and it’s almost like they’re stuck somewhere between humans and robots. They’re made of metal, and yet they can think, and be killed very easily. It seems that there’s either no mechanic left that can repair them, no cure against the rust, or no new metal to replace broken parts. There’s a story going around, that if you eat Casshern, you’ll be saved from the inner destruction. My guess is that that’s some sort of rumour, started by someone who wants to get rid of Casshern.
But really, seeing how everyone in this world is just waiting for destruction. It makes for a very appealing premise. And so far, I really like the side-characters. And about Casshern: he can grow enough, with 22 more episodes to go. Even though he’s emo, he’s not stupid. He wants to find out what the heck he’s done. Memory loss was very well done in Kaiba, so why not here?
Then there’s the matter of this show’s staff. I honestly got scared when I learned that the director of this series was the one behind several Dragonball Z movies. But then it got me thinking: I’ve spent so many seasons, preparing by looking at the staff list, and that only turns out to be reliable in 50% of the cases. There’s only a handful of directors that can really be consistent in their work, like Akiyuki Shinbou, or Koichi Masahino. In fact, quite a lot of my favourite series were directed by people who also directed more questionable series: the director of Toward the Terra screwed up with Itazura na Kiss, the director of The Third went on to direct Penguin no Mondai afterwards (what the heck!?), the director of Shion no Ou also did series as Dragon Drive, Beyblade and Tenjou Tenge. So, why not? At least I can say that Casshern doesn’t feel like anything Dragonball Z at all. Who knows?
huhuhu!!! your coments about the directors are very amusing some how, sometimes it makes me wonder if this directors had even taken scrip writing or directing classes because of the abyssmal directions some of this anime seem to take, or if they are influence by money, fans or the people avode them or it’s that some anime that is given to them is just not their forte what does it take to make something genetic into something original or fresh, since i personally belive a director should be like a chamaleon,and keep the information and ideas flowing to make consistency out of what they direct, i learned this just a month a go, when i started to take literature classes and it’s standards which in a ironic way could be applied to the media too, anyway i glad you pick this one, let see how this turns out and if it’s bad you can always drop it ;).
YAAAAYYY!!! You’re blogging this series!!! You usually blog the series that I love so much but aren’t blogged much at other anime blogs (e.g. baccano, natsume yuujinchou, toward the terra, himitsu) xD
Thanks for pointing out the interesting parts in this episode. That makes me more excited to watch the raw xD *downloading in progress* even though I know I won’t understand much ;_;
please do blog mouryou no hako, kurozuka and michiko + hatchin (even though michiko hasn’t aired, im more than willing to put my money on it) 🙂
Well , I would love to read your blogging Tales of the abyss but it’s your choice to blog Mouryou no Hako so I have no right to complain ^^, anyway I’m waiting for your final thoughts on TOA then. And Mouryou no Hako is not bad anyway, a pretty good horror and adapted from awarded novel , I found it too scary for my own taste though after reading vol.1 of the manga.
About Cassern sins,there are something I found annoying (like that robot girl’s voice)but the concept still looks promising so it’s good you are going to blog this one. Actually almost or every show you blog is also the show I watch so far so looking forward to your blog this season again!
I just hope that you won’t stop watching TOA and the plot haven’t started yet as there aren’t a lot of RPG adaptions that didn’t change much from the games
I watched the first episode of Casshern mostly because of the action, really, though the premise looked like it could also go in an interesting direction. Apparently that happened in the second episode, from what you’ve written. Will keep an eye out for that one.
As for the director….well, I’m no expert, but a competent director can’t do too much if, say, the writing is subpar. It probably also helps if the material plays to his strengths (or experience) rather than his weaknesses (or inexperience).
That said…I’m not a DBZ guy, but Yamauchi did a pretty good job with his later Saint Seiya work (13 OVAs and the last movie), though that was probably also the more interesting part of Saint Seiya as a whole, thus somewhat less formulaic compared to what came before and after. Not exactly the most interesting thing in the world, I suppose, but there it is.
this was the series i didn’t plan to watch, but after reading your thoughts on 1st episode, i somehow felt intrigued and decided to try- and i’m definitely watching it now. i’m happy you’ll be blogging this!
director doesn’t mean anything, it’s the scriptwriter that matters. Take wolf’s rain and darker than black for an example, both are directed by the same guy yet wolf’s rain is an instant classic whereas darker than black is just boring. However, wolf’s rain and eureka seven have the same chief scriptwriter, and both are great.
Wow, just got done wathcing episode 2, its so darn good!
24 episodes in all? Where did you get that? In my opinion, that would be way too long for this series. 12-13 episodes seem just right. At episode 06, we’ve already seen practically all the major characters (with one of the main antagonists, Dio, ending up critically wounded) and there just seems little room left to go beyond that.
“Hearing ‘urusai urusai urusai’ once was enough to convince me to never go near Toradora again.”
LOL. So biased :). I have to say, I have now had the chance to watch the three series which seem to feature Kugimiya Rie’s iconic tsundere roles: Zero no Tsukaima, Shakugan no Shana and Toradora. For the record, I loathed ZnT; SnS had some annoyance factor but, ultimately, I didn’t mind it; and I absolutely adored Toradora.
Seriously, if you ever get time between all the many series you’re currently watching, I’d recommend giving it another go. These characters very quickly become worlds larger than their base stereotypes, and even if the ultimate destination is already predictable, the way this series get there is thoroughly entertaining and engrossing. If you still hate it after Episode 4, that’s fine, but dropping it at Episode 1 because you think Taiga is a Shana clone is a real shame.