Category: Some Quick First Impressions

Some Quick First Impressions: A Certain Scientific Railgun, White Album II and Koi Shigure

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions, White Album

A Cetain Scientific Railgun

Short Synopsis: Our lead character possesses a godmode beam and fights crime.
Well, I now see why Solaris wanted me to blog this series. Talk about something completely different from A Certain Magical Index. Instead, this series takes place in a magic academy that is the most scientifically advanced city in the world, and whose 2,3 million population consists 80% out of students (they seriously expect us to take that seriously?). Overall, the only thing that impressed me here was the animation, which is indeed very smooth and a lot of time went into it. The rest failed to stand out though. Here we have yet another group of teenagers that fight crime, while the police is pointless and non-existent, and it’s another one of those series with a “teens rock adults suck”-mentality. The characters… well, they aren’t bad but overall they feel pretty bland and failed to catch my attention.
ED: Decent J-pop song, but nothing special. This probably is going to be the OP in the future episodes.
Potential: 30%

White Album II

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is well on his way to become the next Makoto Ito.
At this point, I’m really debating whether or not to blog the second season of this series. The first season started off so well, and I loved the subtlety in the storytelling, only for the characters to start incredibly overacting during the dramatic parts. Especially after Aoi Hana showed how to do such a premise properly. This episode really seemed to continue the series in the same veins: some of the subtle parts of this episode were really good, that sea was animated beautifully, I loved Kouta in the hospital near his father, but the dramatic parts were just too much. Considering that the shit hasn’t even hit the fan in this series, I really wonder whether it’s going to be able to deliver properly. It can still turn out to be a great series, the question is just whether or not I want to blog it if it does end up as a bad soap opera.
OP: Like the first, simple yet pleasing to the eyes with a nice song to boot.
ED: Slideshow, but a nice song nonetheless.
Potential: ??%

Koi Shigure

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters get dumped by the ones they’re in love with.
Ah, why not? I might as well write a short blurb about this one. Remember Vanessa from Michiko e Hatchin? Well, her voice-actress stars in what basically is a narrated slide-show about a bunch of love stories. The first instalment features three stories of about five minutes long, which tell about different women as they tell about their experiences in love, and how they were disappointed by it. If you’re not into these things, then Koi Shigure probably isn’t going to make you see the light, but nevertheless the short stories are nice to relax to. They’re nicely build-up considering their short length, and the background songs gave it a bit of a serene atmosphere. It’s a shame that after each story, this atmosphere gets brutally broken by an appearance of the song’s composers that tell about their experiences with this project… or something…
Potential: 40%

Some Quick First Impressions: Seitokai no Ichizon, Armed Librarians – The Book of Bantorra and Kämpfer

by psgels, posted in Armed Librarians - The Book of Bantorra, Some Quick First Impressions

Seitokai no Ichizon

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has his own harem as a member of the student council.
I was fully expecting this series to suck. The way that along with Kämpfer this was labelled as the clichéd moe show of the season, and the utterly horrid character-designs made me expect the worst out of this series. However, two things proved me wrong in particular: first of all, for once we have a bit of a “realistic” portrayal of a student council: just a bunch of teenagers goofing off and having fun, rather than a bunch of elitist bastards that are perfect in every single way and are looked up to by everyone in the school. Second of all: the male lead. This guy is a complete asshole and knows it. He’s so different from your average male lead in these kinds of shows. In fact, these horrible character-designs were exactly part of the point of this show: as a parody. There is no way that you should take this series seriously, and instead it attempts to parody just about everything moe. And really, for me it succeeded so far, I laughed quite a bit. The dialogue just hardly ever seemed to stop and there always seemed to be something going on. My main concern right now is that the creators seemed to be a bit too edging on including a bit of drama at the end of this episode. PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM THAT!!!
OP: Really cheesy J-pop song, but I think that that was the point.
ED: Very funny. Really quirky animation that works.
Potential: 50%

Armed Librarians – The Book of Bantorra

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is the leader of a group of strangely-dressed people that fights some sort of occult group.
Whoa, we’re already 2 days into the season and I’ve already found a contender of the most intriguing first episode of the Season. Armed Librarians is no pretty series: the characters, background and CG don’t mesh at all, and don’t ask me why all of the important characters have such weird outfits compared to everyone else. Nevertheless, it’s the story that caught my attention, which has a lot of nice ideas thrown into it. While at first sight it may seem like yet another band of heroes that fights generic evil organization, but the magic takes itself surprisingly serious: when the lead characters fight faceless goons and they cut off these people’s limbs they really start screaming, rather than just scream and fall down. The bad guys also make use of human bombs, talk about radical! There are lots of different characters, all with different intentions. This really looks like it’s going to be a series that’s not going to seduce anyone with its visuals, music or snappy direction. Instead, the creators are just going to focus on the pure story. I can appreciate that.
OP: Very generic ALI-Project song, but very nice and original visuals.
ED: Just a slide-show with a song, neither which are that special or catch attention.
Potential: 80%

Kämpfer

Short Synopsis: Our lead character can transform into a hot chick and fights other hot chicks.
Oh, the pain. Where to start with this thing? The absolutely horrid character-designs for the male lead? The bland action? The horrile voice-acting? The moe stereotypes? It’s really series like this that give anime a bad name. Here we have a guy who can transform into a girl who then fights with magic fireballs. His love interests include at this point a shy girl and the most popular girl in school (who at this point are already in love with him), the acting his horribly bland and uninspired and it’s chock-full of incredibly shallow fanservice. Watch this if you want something to laugh at, stay away otherwise!
OP: Horrid, cliché, cheesy, a waste of the few good shots of animation with the stuffed animals.
ED: Fanservice galore and really weird hip-movements! The music is also not much better.
Potential: 0%

Some Quick First Impressions: Nyan Koi, Asura Crying 2 and Queen’s Blade: Gyokuza wo Tsugumono

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Nyan Koi!

Because I’m allergic to cats, I can fully understand the horrors of the lead character, having to live inside a house with a cat. It must be near-impossible for him to try and keep things hair-free. Anyway, this episode wasn’t as bad as I expected: the characters are still pretty generic teenagers, but at least they’re not stereotypes and the production-values are pretty solid as well. The only really annoying characters were that lead guy’s characters. The romance is pretty shallow: guy who hates cats can understand cats and needs to help them, he falls in love with a girl who loves cats but can’t seem to understand them and so tortures them. Still, it’s a decent enough romance story, so why the heck are the creators planning to turn this into a harem, if we are to believe the OP and ED? My main problem with this series is the following though: cats are supposed to be awesome. Just look at Kuruneko or cheezburger. The cats in this series are very generic and uninteresting, and the humour mostly comes from the wittier-than-usual male lead.
OP: Very generic and formulaic J-Pop that I definitely do not like.
ED: A bit more bearable than the OP, but still generic and formulaic.
Potential: 40%

Asura Crying 2

I actually liked the first parts of this episode. The introducing monologue caught my interest, the OP was good, and it all made me interested in how this series would pan out. But yeah, then male lead came, opened a door and ran into his love interest while she was changing clothes. *headdesk* I mean, fanservice is one thing, but for this series to pull the biggest harem cliché within the first three minutes is just too much. The rest of the episode also reminded me why I originally dropped this series. It does have a few interesting-looking side-characters, but the main cast is so utterly generic. The male lead and that big-breasted girl especially are very badly acted, clichéd and one-dimensional. To me, this looks like nothing more than yet another whimsical teen-aged adventure that fails to stand out anywhere aside from perhaps a bunch of pretty good theme songs.
OP: Much better than the first, in which Angela tried to sound a bit too much like the ALI Project
ED: Nice enough, although a bit generic.
Potential: 10%

Queen’s Blade: Gyokuza wo Tsugumono

Well, so the Autumn Season has started, and let’s hope that with this series, we’ve got the worst to air first. From now on, I’m just going to put these quick first impressions, and re-post them as I watch more. Do warn me when this starts flooding RSS-feeds. In any case, this first episode of Queen’s Blade’s second season is at least not as abysmal as the way the first season started. At least there’s some narrative as it introduces the premise for this season. But yeah, that doesn’t excuse the fact that the characters are still walking around in the most impractical outfits imaginable. Wherever these women go, they have the chance to be tentacle-raped (no, seriously), and yet nobody seems to find this strange. It’s obvious that I’m not going to follow this series but at least it didn’t burn my eyes as much as the first episode of the first season did.
ED: Just a slide-show of the characters, but the music is decent. (in case you’re wondering: I got this idea from Cinammon Ass)
Potential: 0%

Some quick first Impressions: Ontama!

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Ontama! Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets a strange fairy who’s going to help her overcome the problems in her family. Potential for the Future: 2/10 (Could be a serviceable comedy, but nothing more) Okay, so I used to do my first impressions in batches of three, but I’ve now reached the point at which this system has lead to just too many problems, so for the upcoming Fall Season I’m going to do it in a different way, and even though we’re not even halfway through the Summer Season, Ontama’s first episode that just got released sounds like a good way to experiment. My idea is to just basically create a single post for every new show that airs. Obviously, the potential problem with this system is that it’s going to lead to waves of posts during each season, so let me know when the amount of posts becomes just too big. I’ve also stopped rating these episodes, and instead I’ll just be looking at the potential they create: there are plenty of awesome series with dull first episodes, and in the same way there are also a lot of series with great first episodes that only dull in afterwards. Anyway, Ontama is a rather childish show about a girl whose original parents are divorced and her mother remarried to a guy who’s rather nasty towards her. So she meets a fairy (this time in the form of a stuffed bear) who takes her back to right before she was born so that she could meet her real father. I must say that I’m surprised at the creativity of this scenario and there are some nice ideas, but the presentation is just mediocre in every way. There are some moderately funny jokes, but the lead character is just too stereotypically hyperactive and will probably get annoying very soon. The animal side-kick of this show also listens to every stereotype and doesn’t have anything original to it, and this episode was also full of nude jokes. You might like this if you like energetic yet brainless series, but other than that I don’t see much money in it.]]>

Some quick first Impressions: Sora no Manimani, Spice and Wolf II and Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions, Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

Sora no Manimani

Short Synopsis: Our lead character joins the local astronomy club and falls in love.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Nope)
Ah, dammit. Just when I thought that this Summer Season did so well in avoiding the biggest cliché in the book (the childhood friend), Sora no Manimani comes around, in which the lead character moves to his new high school and runs into the girl he hung out with when he was six, and the two of them nearly instantly fall in love again. So this episode definitely had its boring moments since I’ve seen so many first episodes with the EXACT SAME premise, but thankfully there are a bunch of twists here: for once the male is the tsundere, instead of the female, while the female has ADHD and feels a lot like Haruhi Suzumiya without the tsundere part. This episode had its amusing parts, but it lacked proper build-up: the crying scenes really came from out of nowhere and felt forced and with such an excellent season, I really doubt that I’m going to continue with this one.

Spice and Wolf II

Short Synopsis: Our lead character looks for his next dal to make him some money.
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (Too many great shows this season!)
Ah, it’s nice to see this one back. Spice and Wolf was the big surprise in the season in which it originally aired, because it came from absolutely nowhere, it had the most incompetent staff imaginable and yet it turned out to be such a solid series. What I’m expecting from the second season is much of the same subtle charms that made the first season so enjoyable. My big fear is that it’s going to let its success go too much to its head, go too much in the mainstream direction and become an unsubtle romantic comedy and moe fest. Ah well, we’ll see in which direction it’s going to go, and this episode was enjoyable as one that set up the upcoming arc. It was nothing special, but the first season also started out rather underwhelming, so it’s nothing to be surprised of. My one complaint of this episode is that even though it’s got a much more superior animation company (Brains Base, of all things), the animation cut a lot more corners: there were lots of pointless flashbacks just to recycle some of the used animation of the first season, so I do hope that the creators have saved the rest of the budget for later episodes.

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

Short Synopsis: Our lead character ends up in the middle of an earthquake.
Chance of me Blogging: 100% (Sounds very promising)
And so the next Noitamina series appears. It’s pretty similar to Eden of the East, actually: it’s set in the current day, it’s very realistic, it too criticizes Japanese society subtly and it too has high production-values. Both series have something that’s very rare in anime nowadays: a storyline that’s based on actual topics of today’s society. Production IG already did such a series with Real Drive, but for Bones it’s something totally new. Or should I say, for Studio Kinema Citrus, as they seem to be the main ones responsible for this series, much like Trans-Arts who like to slap the Production IG label on their work. In any case, this first episode was very promising. It’s easy to think that you’re never going to get hit by such a disaster, but what if it does happen? It doesn’t just go for Tokyo, but what if New York was suddenly flooded (which did happen in the past), or what if the oceans continue to rise, and half of The Netherlands ends up drowning? Great food for thought, and the creators chose a likable lead female to center this story around. Usually Noitamina is about adults, but in these days in which teenagers are growing up more and more spoiled by technology and conveniences, she is indeed more suited. I’ll stop rambling now, otherwise this entry is going to get too big.

Some quick first Impressions: Princess Lover, Kanamemo and GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class

by psgels, posted in GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class, Some Quick First Impressions

Princess Lover

Short Synopsis: Our lead character… wait, can’t you guess by the title?
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (No way in hell)
I mean, with a title as Princess Lover, is there anything else you can expect from this series? This premise is so blatantly obvious, it definitely has been the worst show of this new season for me. We have this guy whose father and busty mother get killed, he then manages to save a busty princess with the most pathetic security team ever, he also gets picked as the heir of a rich businessman with a busty maid and gets engaged to a busty noblewoman who is also a tsundere and excellent at sword-fighting. Granted, this series has a big budget, but aside from that it’s just another one of those harems with every cliché possible thrown into it, it’s full of jiggling breasts and the creators also couldn’t resist to throw in some of the most overused boob-jokes. There hardly is anything original or creative, and it just feels like just another Zero no Tsukaima. This is SO not my kind of series.

Kanamemo

Short Synopsis: Our lead character loses her grandmother and starts working at a newspaper store.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (No way in hell)
Ah, I guess that this is where the bad shows this season went to. At first sight it may seem like an interesting premise for a slice of life show: a bunch of girls working at a newspaper store, just living their lives and bringing around newspapers for their daily jobs. Unfortunately, the execution sucks; in the end it turned into just another generic and badly written series with too much moe. The big problem with this series is something that Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou managed to avoid so well: it’s too forced. The creators striked me as if they were really desperate to be funny, so they threw in just about every joke they could think of. This leads to a couple of amusing situations, but mostly just forced jokes that were taken from other series and just aren’t funny, like the drunk girl who keeps groping everyone, or the klutzy girl who keeps crashing into everyone, or the shoujo ai, and let’s not forget the six year old girl who somehow is more mature than all of the other characters combined. If you’re one of those people who hates moe with passion, then stay faaaaar away from this one. If you have no problems with moe… then there are still much better series this season.

GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class

Short Synopsis: Our lead character follows art design classes.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Not in this season)
There really is lots of moe this season; in fact, every series has had it so far. Still, in this case I don’t really mind: the previous seasons have already shown us a wide variety of mature series, and the series this season are a welcome change of pace, and surprisingly good at times as well. Just do expect me to start whining when this trend continues in the upcoming Fall season… In any case GA is another one of those moe slice of life shows, but thankfully unlike Kanamemo it’s really enjoyable. It’s actually a series that hits quite close to home for me, because this series discusses the power of signs, which happened to also be a subject that I followed in a Visual Design class that I followed about half a year ago. Aside from that though, this series stands out in its creativity: there’s always something going on that doesn’t feel copied from every other moe series (not even Hidamari Sketch, which also was about art students). Out of all the series that premiered during this season, this one made me laugh the most due to a few priceless scenes. My only problem with this series is that silent blue-haired girl: her voice-actress feels like a bit of a one-trick pony. I feel like I’ve heard the exact same voice in fifty other shows, with the EXACT SAME personality. That really gets boring after a while.
Edit: ah, the director of Les Miserables, Cromartie High School, Kodomo no Omocha and Digi Charat. This guy is a true eccentric that can really take the best out of this series

Some quick first Impressions: Element Hunters, Canaan and Zan Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei

by psgels, posted in Canaan, Some Quick First Impressions

Element Hunters

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters travel to another world and hunt monsters.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (Nope)
Well, so finally we have a bad series again. Element Hunters is an attempt to bring back the parallel world children’s adventures genre (like Digimon, Flint the Time Detective and others), but in the end it’s just lazy and uninspired. Basically we have a bunch of kids who travel to some parallel world with chemical element themes, but the reason why they end up there is virtually non-existent: from out of nowhere, they just run into a gate that transports them, and from out of nowhere they just start fighting some weird monsters like they’ve been doing since they were three. While I admit that the characters have their charms and nice voice actors, but that’s also the only thing that’s inspired about this episode. Also, for a series about chemistry this episode also showed that the creators know absolutely nothing of their subject: this episode was about nitrogen, and instead of discussing its practical uses, or the fact that 80% of the air we breathe consists of it, the only thing it can think of is some weird nitroglycerin flowers. I mean, seriously? This series is in every single way inferior to that other science show that’s currently airing (Marie & Gali).

Canaan

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters kills a bunch of people during a big festival
Chance of me Blogging: 70% (Choosing the shows to blog this season is going to be HELL)
As if this season didn’t already have enough awesome shows: here’s the next one. It’s awesome to see P.A. Works back with their next series, and it shows. This episode had by far the best animation of the season so far. But that’s not what I’m excited about. What really set this series apart was how well it portrayed such a big festival, in which so many things were happening at the same time. The creators didn’t just tell a story, but they also brought the entire festival alive during this episode. Everything and everyone was moving and there was always something going on, from random people having fun to people shooting each other and others going insane and poking their own eyes out. There were so many details stuffed into just this episode, it’s really amazing and it’s going to be awesome if the rest of the climaxes of this series are going to be the same thing. This series has now already shown that it can deliver a great action scene. Now all that’s left is to develop the plot and characters.

Zan Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei

Short Synopsis: Our lead character is in despair.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (haven’t blogged the first two seasons, ain’t gonna blog it this time either)
And so, the third installment of Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei has started. I do have to say that the creators are going to have to put in some real effort to prevent this from turning into one of those franchises that refuses to bloody DIE. The original premise went past its expiration date halfway through the second season, and with this season the creators are really going to have to do more than just repeat the same formula over and over yet again. This episode was… decent. It wasn’t good nor bad, it had some amusing moments, but I really fear that I’m going to get tired of the series in no time if it doesn’t get more interesting.

Some quick first Impressions: Taishou Yakyuu Musume, Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou and Bakemonogatari

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Okay, so I have decided to change the format of these quick first impressions a bit. Instead of waiting for three episodes to air before posting them, I’m just going to post what I have, and edit in the remaining ones when they air.

Taishou Yakyuu Musume

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets invited to play baseball by one of her friends.
Chance of me Blogging: 10% (With such a strong season it’s unlikely)
I really have to say that this has to be one of the best starts of a season in a long while. Of the seven shows I’ve seen so far, only two of them weren’t interesting and fun to watch. There hardly have been any annoyances so far. Anyway, Taishou Yakyuu Musume is the winner of this season’s WTF-moment when the lead character starts singing and dancing rather badly from out of nowhere (those poor typesetters, by the way). It’s a really nice series, though. It’s a slice of life shows about a bunch of girls, living around eighty years ago who plan to start up a baseball club. It’s an interesting premise, and while the slice of life hasn’t been as good as in Aoi Hana, it’s still enjoyable and relaxing. The lead characters are naturally charming without being forced or overly moe, so overall I’m quite pleased with this show so far.

Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters know magic.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (There are too many good shows this season)
The only thing that sucks in this season is the character-designs: all so far are bland, don’t try anything new and lack a visual identity. Apart from that, nearly every series has been enjoyable for me (and besides, the character-design problem will probably go away once I watch Bakemonogatari). I think that that’s a prime for me. Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou granted is the second-worst TV-show this season, and yet I enjoyed this episode. It’s strange: it’s a premise that I usually hate with passion. Here we have a bunch of teenagers who happen to know magic and do… stuff. But strangely this episode really amused me. At first sight we do have a bunch of stereotypes, but they work well together and I liked the chemistry between them a lot. What made this series better than the average moe comedy for me is that it never felt forced: it was the characters who wrote this series, not the scriptwriters. It’s a series that doesn’t pretend to be anything more than it already is: it’s just a bunch of girls having fun with magic, nothing more. Granted, the hot spring part at the end was a bit too much, but heck; I liked the rest of this episode. What’s happening to me!?

Bakemonogatari

Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets a girl who has no weight.
Chance of me Blogging: 70% (I’m impressed)
Whoa, people weren’t kidding that Bakemonogatari was going to rock this season. This episode only gave a small taste of what is to come, and yet I’m very intrigued already. It has pretty much the best OP of the season. Horror series have always had downright excellent first episodes, and this episode really proved the same, as this episode was my second to only Aoi Hana this season so far. It’s great to see that Shinbo still has enough inspiration to try out new kinds of animation and visuals, so this series doesn’t feel like a rehash of one of his previous shows. It’s also great to see that he has planned out this series very well, and is even willing to extend the amount of episodes beyond the amount that can be broadcast, simply to avoid this show getting rushed. Seriously, more series should do that.

Some quick first Impressions: Umineko no Naku Koro ni, Aoi Hana and Needless

by psgels, posted in Aoi Hana, Some Quick First Impressions, Umineko no Naku Koro ni

Umineko no Naku Koro ni

Short Synopsis: Our lead character visits an island owned by his grandfather, along with the rest of his mysterious family.
Chance of me Blogging: 70% (It’s from the creators of Higurashi, so yeah)
Well, the series with the biggest amount of hype around it has finally aired. First of all I have to ask: out of all possible lead characters, could the creators have chosen one that is even more bland than “Battler”? He may be eighteen years old, but he still acts like an immature teenager and keeps making boob-jokes. In all seriousness though, this first episode was a bit of a disappointment, and well for the following reason: the acting. This episode suffered from a cast of bad voice actors that hardly know to use any subtlety in their voices. This goes for the lead character, but also for just about the entire rest of the cast. These kinds of stories require the characters to be able to switch to a lot of emotions, but the change from one of these emotions in the others feels woody at best. Ok, sure there could be a chance that everyone in the family is infected with the “hopelessly bad acting virus”, but the voice acting cast really needs to do a better job in the rest of the episodes if they want to do justice to this excellent storyline.

Aoi Hana

Short Synopsis: Our lead character enters high-school and meets with an old childhood friend.
Chance of me Blogging: 80% (Lots of potential)
Now this is more like it. Noise has done it again, as this seems likely to be the third hit in a row for the time-slot. It’s obviously not going to be for those who want a fast-paced storyline, but I personally loved the subtle yet poignant drama between the two lead characters who meet each other again after having been separated when they were kids. The tall girl is a bit of a crybaby, but she definitely has her charms. The rest of the cast also feels alive, rather than being a bunch of 2D Stereotypes. There wasn’t any annoyance about this episode, aside from the fact that I just know that the rich and detailed animation of this episode is probably going to disappear after the next episode.

Needless

Short Synopsis: Our lead character loses his sister and meets a weird priest with strange powers.
Chance of me Blogging: 20% (With so many other great shows this season? Not likely)
It’s strange: the character-designs in this series are abysmal; their style is uninspired and too similar to most other anime and the costumes make EVERONE look like an incredibly ridiculous fashion-victim. The rest of the visuals however, are really sweet. The animation was really good, the gun-designs rocked, and the shots in which the characters weren’t doing bland things really rocked with their visual style. Overall, this was a typical first episode in which the creators go all out to make it as exciting as possible, and for me they did a pretty good job: this episode was a lot of fun to watch, with a lot of adrenaline-pumping action and an interesting cast of characters so far. This series feels the most like the next Koukaku no Regios, so let’s hope that this time the creators do know how to handle the rest of the story, as it definitely has the potential for a fast-paced action story. I liked how the main characters are of all kinds of different ages: we have a kid, a teenager, a guy in his thirties and an old guy. Definitely makes the series varied.

Some quick first Impressions: Saint Seiya The Lost Canvas, Fight Ippatsu! Juuden-Chan! and Umi Monogatari

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions, Special Articles

Saint Seiya The Lost Canvas

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has huge powers for no particular reason and gets to become a saint.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (No way)
Okay, so I’m pretty much a Saint Seiya noob: I’ve never watched anything of the franchise, despite how it seems to be churning out an OVA every year. So yeah, this felt like a good opportunity to check out and see what this franchise was all about. Well, if the rest of the installments are anything like this first episode, then it’s a franchise full of hopelessly bad acting and stereotypes. Seriously, this episode starts with a bunch of generic bullies nearly killing a dog, only for one of the lead characters to act like a flower-child and protect it. The other lead character is your typical hot-blooded teen-aged lead, only exaggerated even more than usual. The episode was full of inconsistencies or things that just didn’t make any bloody sense; my favourite of this has to be the point where a river was blocked by a bunch of rocks from a landslide. So what does our main character do? HE TRIES TO PUNCH HIS WAY THROUGH THE ROCKS. Granted though, the animation looked really nice and the backgrounds looked pretty. But pretty pictures aren’t going to excuse the disaster that is the cast of characters.

Fight Ippatsu! Juuden-Chan!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character hasn’t been toilet-trained properly and Deus ex Machinas depressions away.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (No way)
It’s stupid, clichéd, full of fanservice and stereotyped. But still I have to admit that it made me laugh at times. This is basically another shounen mahou shoujo, but for once the chemistry between the male and female lead was enjoyable, rather than annoying. The problem with this series however, is that that’s just about the only thing that I liked. The visuals look horrible, the background music is generic voice-less J-Pop. The drama is incredibly shallow: it’s built up poorly and simply solved because the lead character has the power make depressions go completely away. It just screams laziness to me. The fanservice also was abysmal at times. Fully unneeded, especially in the ED, and you know a character is bad when she still pees in her pants.

Umi Monogatari

Short Synopsis: Our lead character lives under water.
Chance of me Blogging: 40% (If the rest of the season is mediocre)
Another series with lots of moe, but it’s actually pretty interesting. Umi Monogatari tells the story of a tribe of people who live underwater and use strange rings to move to the shore. It’s got an ambient atmosphere with lots of quiet piano background songs. The pacing is also quiet yet at the end o the episode there were definitely some dark pasts. A major theme of this episode also was cultural differences, which can become quite interesting as well if the series develops it properly. My one gripe with this episode was the comedy, though; it just felt forced, so that’s a potential problem for the future of this series. I know that ZEXCS isn’t the best company out there, and the animation and visuals really are nothing special, but if they can make this series as solid as they did with Wagaya no Oinarisama, then I’m in.