Shining Hearts – Shiawase no Pan
Short Synopsis: Our lead character lives together with three cute girls.
This episode threw me off. With a title like “Shiawase no Pan”, I thought that there was a character named “Pan” or something. Not that the main characters would actually be bakers. Beyond that, this episode… it felt like playing an actual RPG: the characters went from one place to the other, talked to a few people and then went home again. That is not the way you should adapt something like this. RPG adaptations are meant to take liberties in order to weave their storylines because RPGs have things that just cannot be translated to anime format, more than any other kind of source material. So yeah, this was a bit of a boring way to close off such a streak of excellent first episodes. All the characters do is walk around and sell bread. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There were some intriguing parts that will probably be explored later, the characters were all moeblobs with really bad character designs, but they weren’t forced into stereotypes, and this show had a relaxing atmosphere that would have worked… if it wasn’t for one thing: throughout this episode I really got the impression that the creators have no idea what they’re talking about. I’m referring to the bread: it just assumes that the characters can make great bread, but it doesn’t even put an ounce of thought into why this bread is great, or how it’s made, or where they get their ingredients from. It’s just “Okay, we have bread! Let’s give it to people and make everyone happy!” I mean, if you’re going to bother making a show about bread, you should at least do your homework, right?
OP: Granted, this does have that RPG-feel, despite the annoying vocals.
ED: I… just… what did I just watch? Who found this a good idea?
Potential: 30%
Eureka Seven Ao
Short Synopsis: Our lead character will supposedly pilot the strongest mecha in existence.
With Eureka Seven it is of course a bit difficult to really judge its first episode. I remember how I actually dropped it for a while, until I saw how good it got after a while. This epiode of Eureka Seven Ao definitely made a better first impression than the first episode of Eureka Seven did. For starters its lead character isn’t as annoying as Renton, and the creators immediately start by showing some good drama around him, and his feelings towards his parents. His girlfriend still fits the bill of “female lead”, but there are small parts where she sets herself apart from her counterparts. The action and soundtrack also sound very promising based on the small tastes they gave us here. I do have to say though, that this episode also had a lot of parallels with Bounen no Xamdou’s opening episode, and compared to that series’ opening episode, this unfortunately lost out, especially in its characterization. Still, the potential is definitely there for this series to both deliver engaging action and characters. It’s now up to the rest of this series to develop the rest, and it definitely has some good papers for that. It’s a shame that this couldn’t get 50 episodes, but 25 works too.
ED: Not the most memorable ED, but also definitely not the worst. Also who’s the kid?
Potential: 85%
Tsuritama
Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to live together with a cute boy.
Above all, this was really refreshing. In a world in which most of the teenaged series try to see who can rip each other off the most, here we have a show who really makes a point in being original. It’s not just the theme of fishing, but the characters and their antics are all delightfully fresh and the cliches that are there are executed different from usual. For example: for as many transfer students that we see in anime, we actually rarely see people move. the lead characters’ grandmother also feels refreshing in her light-heartedness: she was old, yet not the same kind helpless old woman you see everywhere. And yeah, in a season with Shinichiro Watanabe and Sayo Yamamoto, you’d almost forget that Kenji Nakamura also is an incredibly good director. This episode was fun and whimsical, and A-1 at the helm combined with a number of very interesting animation techniques. The end of this episode also hinted that there will be much more than meets the eye at first sight, and I feel like this time, Kenji Nakamura went with a series that DOES fit perfectly in just 11 episodes. After sitting though Guilty Crown, I am really glad to see that Noitamina is back again.
OP: Some actually decent J-Rock. Finally.
ED: Dreamy song, and surprisingly catchy.
Potential: 90%
