Category: Some Quick First Impressions

Jewel Pet Kira Deco

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a mascot.
Jewel Pet always was this really annoying series with WAY TOO MUCH SUGAR, even for your average show for young girls. This time though, it seems like some crack slipped in with the sugar, because what the hell did I just watch? This episode got surreal at times, as some really bizarre ideas passed the screen. I am really not sure who found it a good idea to turn the moon into a television or a disco-ball, or why there is a sentient bus made completely out of jewels. Speaking of which: this show has a really, really unhealthy obsession with Jewels. I know it’s called Jewel Pet and that the first episodes of the previous seasons had a gair amount of them in it. But it’s just taken completely overboard. These guys stick jewels on almost everything. I’ll never be able to look at “bling bling” the same way… But granted, due to these surreal ideas, this was indeed the best first episode of Jewel Pet that I got to sample. Not that that standard is particularly high to beat though…
OP: Terrible song.
ED: The singer here can’t sing, but also doesn’t help that the song is again terrible..
Potential: 40%

Yurumates 3D

Short Synopsis: Our lead character moves to Tokyo.
Here is another one of these series with 5-minute episodes. And again it was pretty dull. It’s about this girl who moves into a new apartment and gets totally overwhelmed by her new roommates… and that’s it. This series did try to be funny using the usual tricks… only it wasn’t. I really don’t have much to say about this one: this is just a boring slice of life series, nothing more and nothing less. Oh, but the voice actress of the female lead is very annoying. Way too high-pitched.
OP: Bad J-pop and giant robots.
Potential: 0%

Sankarea

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to date the hottest girl in town.
Well, this was also pretty boring. Sankarea is like the show you sometimes see, that has a lot of moe, yet decent dialogue and good acting, yet still consists out of way too many cliches. This episode already established a pseudo-harem of three girls for him (no, I don’t care that two of those are his sister and cousin; that’s never stopped anime before anyway), there is the standard whining best friend, and the encounter between the main couple happens the same way as usual, with the male lead running into the main girl’s moment of weakness. Too much of this episode was “been there, done that” and there was little to make up for it. The only thing that caught my attention was the main characters’ feelings for his dead cat, of all things. But yeah, other than that this pretty much is Studio Deen’s second zombie show this season, only this time it’s the girl who gets to be one. At least the visuals looked pretty. I could recognize that the artists who worked on this episode also worked on Jigoku Shoujo.
OP: Creative use of visuals, at least.
ED: Actually good song.
Potential: 30%

Acchi Kocchi

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a random high schooler.
This is the type of slice of life series that I have a really hard time enjoying. This was basically an entire episode consisting of random incidents of the characters doing random stuff, without much coherence between them other than “they go to school” or “they go to the game store”. A lot of this episode was just random, but didn’t really show much of the characters other than their basic personalities. It’s good to see an actual couple for once (they are, right?), but this overall just was too boring. The moe antics also didn’t really help, because the girls in this show all try way too hard to be cute. Yes, all of them.
OP: Who on earth found it a good idea to make these poor voice actors sing. This sounds terrible.
ED: “Hey, you know you can buy figures from this series? We’re just here to remind you! *wink wink, nudge nudge*
Potential: 20%

Sengoku Collection

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is the guy who united Japan when it just consisted out of a number of warring states.
Well, I didn’t think it was possible, but yes: there actually is a series this season that is worse than Queen’s Blade and Naruto SD. Good lord, Oda Nobunaga, what have they done to you? I mean, I knew that this series would turn famous people from the Sengoku era into moe girls, but I didn’t think that it’d be this bad. This series’ Oda was the most annoying tsundere I have seen in a long while. Throughout the entire episode she did nothing but whine and attempt to act cute. even though she didn’t really do anything. Her acting was terrible, and to make matters even worse: she somehow ends up in modern day, and runs into a common loser. This is the worst kind of wish fulfillment. It’s dull, bland, it doesn’t try at all and just relies on the fact that it has a bunch of badly delivered moe antics in the hopes of selling DVDs. I mean, I know that fiction is about taking artistic liberties with history. However, this gimmick isn’t even new. People have been turning famous figures into annoying cute girls for ages now. Are there really people who get turned on by this?
OP: “We couldn’t be bothered to animate the whole thing, so here are a bunch of uninspired slide-shows.”
ED: Very badly sung, especially in combination with those instruments.
Potential: 0%

Shirokuma Cafe

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a panda.
Holy crap, where did this come from? I mean, every season has its set of series that get announced later than usual, and which are usually these bad and minimally produced gimmick series. In this season however, they just continue to surprise me with their solid execution. Shirokuma Cafe turned out to be a bizarre slice of life series, but it’s actually fully animated and the characterization here really is surprisingly good and realistic. The creators here perfectly captured the laziness that you’d expect from a panda without reverting to cliches. It was a tad annoying at times, but this really was surprisingly heart-warming and the jokes were pretty good too. The entire series is based around a cafe, with the three main characters being a panda, polar bear and penguin. You’d expect that all three would end up working there, but no: the polar bear is the only employee, the rest of the characters just are guests. As for what the panda’s job is… well, just watch the episode if you want to find out.
OP: There aren’t many good OPs this season, but the ones that are good are really good here.
ED: Stop-motion using go pieces. Great idea!
Potential: 75%

Gon

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a dinosaur.
Forget about the title. Forget about the main character, he’s just some random kid with superpowers. No, this series is about a bear named Ussu. This is the guy who made this show surprisingly entertaining for a kids’ show. I was really fearing after having to sit through that Naruto SD show, but these series can actually be funny. Aside from Usu, there are a couple of other characters in this show who had some good jokes, the albatross in particular. Gon really is just a vehicle to bring everything together. In the meantime though, he also is very annoying. Oh, and if you’re wondering what the heck mammals are doing in a dinosaur show: the show also doesn’t explain that. It’s just a random island with a bunch of animals in which a dinosaur randomly appears. This series is obviously very childish and all, but here is the thing: aside from Uchuu Kyoudai (which isn’t a real comedy anyway), this was the funniest first episode i got to sample this season so far.
OP/ED: Warning: do not listen to these songs, unless you want them to get stuck inside your head for the rest of the week.
Potential: 75%

Arashi no Yoru ni

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are polar opposites.
This is what I mean by kids series trying harder: this series has an actual story that challenges the characters, rather than being random fighting or hi-jinks. Movies have already gotten this down, but there are very few TV-series like this, which is why I’m glad this was made, even though it already was adapted into a movie. What I hope is that this show will expand on the movie’s themes and allow everything to flow more naturally. This episode gave a good start: it was pretty similar to how the movie started, only with a bit more dialogue here and there; a good start. I especially liked how this episode focused on how forced this entire premise is, but in a good way. In terms of animation this series clearly is inferior, because the CG can look quite ugly at times, but at least the characters move around a lot here, and they do so differently from your average CG-show. My big fear of this show will be the overacting: this episode kept it from going overboard, but there is potential for this to dive into straight-up melodrama.
OP: Um, guys. A little too much of romantic undertones here…
ED: The same “let’s have the cast walk nowhere”-ed that you see everywhere (this makes three this season already)
Potential: 70%

Kuromajo-san ga Tooru

Short Synopsis: Our lead character does magic stuff.
So, this turned out to be a story of a girl who gets harassed by a black witch and ends up as one in training. Episodes are only 7 minutes long, and it’s all fairly plain and all, but for a kiddie show it could have been worse. If you want your kids to be quiet for 10 minutes, this show is good bait for this. For older audiences though…. I don’t think that this show has much to offer. A lot of stuff in this episode just happened for the heck of it, and this show is also pretty bad at explaining why everything is happening, with pretty minimal animation. It’s not as bad as with the horrid flash shows, but any less animation and this would be a slide-show. Also, the teacher in this series is an asshole. In the end, the creators could have taken more chances. I mean, Risky Safety was a show with the exact same premise, but it was 50 times more adorable and creative than this here.
OP: Cheese
Potential: 40%

Recorder to Randsell Re

Short Synopsis: Our lead character stands out.
So, time to check back on how this series turned out. And my impression of this series has gone down even more. We’re supposed to be 14 episodes into the series already, and all this episode did was re-establish the premise of this show: having a very tall younger brother and a very tiny younger sister. What happened in the previous episodes, really? This felt like watching the first episode all over again. There doesn’t seem like any progress was made at all. I know that the episodes are only 2 minutes long and all, but this is a bit too extreme. On top of that, I like my comedies to be well acted. This was the entire opposite of that. Especially the brother was hard to watch.
ED: Dull song. And why the sudden fanservice?
Potential: 0%

Naruto SD – Rock Lee no Seishun Full-Power Ninden

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a bad Naruto fanfic character.
Oh god… make it stop. One of the hardest types of episodes to sit through with these kinds of first impressions is the bad comedy. I mean, Queen’s Blade was terrible, but it still was kindof bearable due to how bad it was. Naruto SD however, is a series that fails miserably at being entertaining. This was 25 minutes of sitting through horrible jokes. Over and over again. The creators of this series have no idea how to tell good jokes. More often than not we just have Rock Lee act random for no discernible reason, it keeps repeating its bad jokes over and over, and this show thrives on making random toilet jokes that fail at being funny. The characters are all incredibly annoying and probably the only value this holds is for diehard fans of the Naruto franchise. And yet for some inexplicable reason this show finds it necessary to explain the basic premise of this show over and over again.
OP: Cheesy J-Rock
ED: Also dull aside from the random dancing.
Potential: 0%

Queens Blade Rebellion

Short Synopsis: Our lead character boobs.
Look. I’m not against all fanservice. In fact, the series I’m looking forward to the most this season will probably have tons of it as well. However, what I can’t stand are the series who use it as an excuse for being terrible. It really is a shame that pasting a bunch of boobs everywhere guarantees dvd sales like this. This episode was by far the worst first episode I had to watch this season so far. The action was terribly choreographed and made no sense. And really: I don’t care how many famous voice actors you got for this show; the acting still is abysmal. Oh, and I have to congratulate this series, for pulling the dumbest twist I have ever seen while sampling these first episodes. Really: imagine a girl with big boobs (clearly visible) in a short skirt and very long coloured hair. It takes until the armor around her boobs breaks for everyone to realize her gender. I… have no idea. In more than six years of blogging, I have never seen stupidity this big.
ED: Poorly produced J-Rock song. Not to mention the terrible visuals.
Potential: 0%

The Legend of Korra

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is the legendary chosen one.
Allright already! I give in; I’ll watch the first episode of this Avatar sequel. Normally I don’t cover American animation, but with this there were so many people requesting it. My impression is, that it’s indeed a pretty good series based on this first impression. The animation is really good: it is inspired by anime’s level of detail in its art, yet manages to retain the amount of fluidity that’s typical of American animation. There are some cliches in the cast of characters, like the spunky kid in the middle of a dignified Asian-inspired setting, which is quite common in these types of stories, and Korra herself definitely has her annoying moments. I am intrigued however by the politics in this series, although I have no idea what role the main character will end up playing in this. Everyone keeps talking about how she’s special as the avatar, but most of the problems that are presented in this episode don’t really seem like problems that can be solved by someone who just happens to be able to “bend” multiple elements.
ED: Very fast credits. Good music.
Potential: 80%

Ginga he Kickoff

Short Synopsis: Our lead character wants to found a football team.
Uh so yeah. Don’t ask me why, but we suddenly got treated to the fifth episode of Ginga he Kickoff. As for what happened to the first four… I have no idea. So I just watched the fifth episode of this series, and really, it’s fairly representative of the nature of this series. There were parts I enjoyed. The cast of side-characters is fairly nice. Better than Area no Kishi in any case. It just has one really, really big problem: the main character! Good lord, this kid is horrible. He keeps yelling and whining throughout the entire episode. In this episode he wants a certain person to become the coach of his football team, and do you know how he ends up doing it? By whining and whining and whining until the coach can’t take it anymore. Yes, the parents in the world will be thankful to this series.
OP: Very cheesy J-Pop
ED: Another dull song.
Potential: 10%

Natsuiro Kiseki

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are a bunch of middle school girls.
Okay. I am intrigues. I’m definitely going to keep watching this series. I’m not going to say why; you just need to watch this episode for yourself. Instead I’m going to talk a bit about this episode in general. Natsuiro Kiseki was a series that I really feared would just become another copy and paste moeblob clone. However, the execution is different from your average series. There is actual tension between the characters, and not in the usual clown-straight man pairing, but it feels much more natural than usual. It still has its problems of being way too angsty. There is in particular a blond girl in this show who needs to lay off the angst, because she kept causing drama that could have been solved by proper communication. Despite that though, this series doesn’t feel random, but the characters are actually talking about something. Some characters are a tad cliched (the deadpan girl in particular), but others are actually pretty inspired (the green-haired girl in this show is actually an interesting variation on the “ditzy girl”-archetype).
OP: Dull J-rock.
ED: Dull J-pop (for those who are new to this blog: yes, I kindof dislike these genres)
Potential: 80%

Gakkatsu

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a badly animated teacher
Well, at the very least the utterly horrid flash shows are getting better. Don’t get me wrong, this was still far from good, but it does spend much more time into actually animating its characters and make things move, rather than High Score or Haiyoru Nyaruani which just were a bunch of still frames with moving mouths. These five minutes actually had some decent direction and camera work. The soundtrack actually was energetic, the dialogue was delivered with some actual energy, rather than trying to be as annoying as possible. But yeah, what’s this series about? An overly enthusiastic teacher with strange ideas like trying to rename that bump that some people have on their wrists. There was some nice dialogue in this episode that makes it a good gimmick for one episode, but it’s still got no chance to actually be worthwhile in the long run. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that these shows are actually getting better, but they still have a long way to go.
OP: Surprisingly catchy…
Potential: 10%

Ozuma

Short Synopsis: Our lead character runs into a cute girl.
Clumsy, is how I’d describe this first episode of Ozuma. It definitely doesn’t win points in the build-up or execution. It feels like the characters all read their lines a little too fast, and this show doesn’t seem familiar of the concept of pauses between lines. The animation also is quite poor and I really expected more of Ryousuke Takahashi. On the other hand though, we’ve got a very strong contender for the best character designs of the season (which probably can only be contested by Saint Seiya and Lupin; yes, I know they’re all remakes of past character designs. I can’t help it that most characters look the same nowadays), along with an interesting setting focused on all sorts of desert vehicles. This really is meant as an homage to the Matsumoto Leiji series. This unfortunately means that if you’re not familiar with him, you’ll probably miss a lot here. Despite the flaws though, the end of this episode did give me that vibe I’ve had with some of his other stories. Let’s see whether this one can develop into something interesting in just six episodes, however it really has to fix the poor acting for that. It’s not like every character here is badly acted, but there is some pretty bad stuff among them.
OP: Dull J-Rock
ED: The singing isn’t bad, but the song is a bit boring and it’s just another dull slideshow mostly comprising of only the females in the series. Show some of the guys for god’s sake.
Potential: 60%

Hiiro no Kakera

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a princess who needs to be protected by hot bishies.
Studio Deen has always been the most prominent producer of shoujo series. So yeah, when they decline, it’s no wonder that the entire genre takes a nose-dive. With Hiiro no Kakera they’re basically making the same show yet again. This pretty much is another Hakuouki or Brave 10, only this time things take place in modern times. The bishies here are the same bishies that you see in all those other series. The execution is the same as ever and does very little to entertain. I have to give the series this: it does know how to build up an atmosphere, and at least the writing is better than usual with these series. The animation however…was really bad here. There is movement, but that movement is incredibly awkward. The worst was when one of the characters tried to do a somersault and instead randomly slowly floats into the air for three seconds. That’s also a case of bad direction here: there are no attempts made to make things look better or more interesting than they actually are. The only thing that the graphics have going for them is that the backgrount artists are really good, but that too seems wasted here with this lackluster execution. When was the last time we had a good reverse harem anyway? Yumeiro Patissiere?
Potential: 15%

Smile Precure

Short Synopsis: Our lead character battles against evil bad guys who turn everyone emo.
Do you k now why I love Heartcatch Precure? It’s because it immediately was awesome. Just show someone the first episode, and it’s immediately clear that it is a major step above the others. I mean, I heard that Suite Precure got better as it went along and all. But does that really warrant having to sit through what could be 26 episodes of boring stories and the most moronic bad guy goons ever, just to get to there? And that brings us to Smile Precure. I’ve seen quite a few first Precure episodes over the years, and while this one was nowhere as good as the Heartcatch Precure opening, I still have to say that it makes for the second place here. It unfortunately has a lot of Precure cliches, and the chemistry between the five main characters still consists out of overacting and annoying cliches. But this episode had a great sense of energy. This episode was fun to watch because of that, and the direction was consistently sharp.The character designs unfortunately are generic, but the animation is very good as well, and the music again is of a very high quality here. The big task for the next episode is to give me a reason to continue watching: give me a reason to care about these characters and make them more than just the cliches that they seem to be at first.
OP: Catchy?
ED: Are they ever going to stop doing these godawful CG Precure EDs?
Potential: 70%