DAN DA DAN
Short Synopsis: A girl who believes in ghosts and a boy who believes in aliens both find what they’re looking for in the worst way possible.
Lenlo: I’m so torn on Dan Da Dan. On the plus side, it looks great, being both well directed and well animated. I know it’s early in the season, but it’s the best looking show I’ve seen so far. Seriously, the colors were beautiful, I loved how the Occult and Sci-Fi bits both had their own distinct palettes. I also really enjoyed the characters, both had a lot of personality and their banter was great. Special praise to the VAs, who really sold who these kids were and made it a joy to listen to them. It’s just… Does the humor have to be so sexually focused? Why did we need a scene all about our female lead being prepped for rape by aliens? Why does the Turbo Granny have to be obsessed with eating dicks? Some of it’s fine, gotta set up a cute romance between the leads, which it did well, I’m on board for that. It’s just… Kind of weird and uncomfortable in places? It’s not a huge knock, I can put up with it and hopefully it falls off as we go kind of like how Mineta did in My Hero Academia. But it is something I wish wasn’t there.
Potential: 80%
Amun: The heck did I just watch. I mean, it was fantastic, don’t get me wrong. Creepy Nuts on the OP delivers another great track (I’ve been a fan of every anime track they’ve done, starting with Call of the Night) – kind of surprising that it’s a bespoke track, but given how over the top everything else is in this episode, why not. Science Saru looks in great form, with brilliant colors, fluid fights, and generally top tier animation. Character designs are fantastic, and the world looks great too. Plus, the writing nicely ties in a bow with our lead’s name at the end – an unexpected nice touch. I definitely feel as though Mob Psycho accidentally got assigned the animation team from JJK…and the writers from Gintama. I have to agree with Lenlo on this – tone down the sexual humor. Like…is everyone okay over there? Just relax a bit, and you have an amazing show – plenty of quality material without granny eating dicks. Avoid going too far off the deep end there, and this is probably my anime of the season (yes, this season is looking stacked).
Potential: 99% – 1% per dick eaten
Blue Box
Short Synopsis: A soon-to-be high school badminton player draws a little closer to his crush, a freshman on the basketball team.
Wooper: Blue Box sure is proud of its 3DCG gym layout, huh? That winding shot where the camera snaked through its spacious interior, revealing dozens of computer animated athletes practicing their respective sports, all bathed in the morning light filtering through the windows, should have been impressive. Really, though, it had little to do with either Taiki or Chinatsu, despite showing off the place where they first met and now spend most of their time together. Blue Box just wants to look as dynamic as possible, even when it ought to take a step back, sort of like a battle shounen going overboard with effects animation while its characters are left to languish. That’s not to say that these two won’t become worthwhile romantic leads, however, especially not now that they’re living under the same roof. She credits him for revitalizing her competitive drive after one of their conversations, and he admires far more about her than her looks. But there’s no denying that looks are important – perhaps too important – to Blue Box itself, with all its backlit and soft focus character shots. I can see a good romantic dramedy emerging from this setup, especially since Taiki and Chinatsu are quite different people (playing individual and team sports, respectively), but it’ll need more scenes set where the show’s sparkling sunbeams can’t reach in order to undergo that evolution.
Potential: 45%
Lenlo: In trying to be both a romance anime and a sports anime, I can’t help but feel that Blue Box has missed the mark on both. On the romance side, I’m not particularly invested in any of the pairings. Maybe it’s too early to say this since we’re only one episode in, but I distinctly remember shows like Yubisaki drawing me right from the get go. Here meanwhile, I barely know anything about the female lead and the male is kind of just… obsessive? There isn’t much chemistry here is basically what I’m getting at. As for the sports side, I don’t think Blue Box really cares all that much for the two sports it has going on, nor does it have the production to back them up? Again, maybe I’m missing the point here and the sports stuff is just meant to be window dressing rather than actually plot relevant. Whatever the case, nothing about Blue Box really hooked me in any way. It looks good enough, and I know some friends who were reeled in, so I imagine some might get something out of it. But for me, this is an easy pass.
Potential: 25%
Acro Trip
Short Synopsis: A schoolgirl makes a pact with a clueless villain in order to increase the profile of a local magical girl.
Lenlo: Wooper basically has the right of it down below. While I respect the attempt to do something different, to shake up the Mahou Shoujo genre a bit, and I like it more than the blatant porno that was the BDSM Mahou Shoujo from a few seasons ago, Acro Trip doesn’t quite hit the mark. As Wooper says, it’s just too slow and quiet for this to really work. It feels closer to some kind of Mahou Shoujo Slice of Life than any kind of twist or subversion. Combine that with a lackluster production and really forgettable character designs, and I think you’d have a better time watching the currently airing Precure than this. At least that has a fanbase to enjoy it with, decent production, and according to some friends it’s getting pretty damn good. It’s still a Precure, but hey, if you’re in the market for a Mahou Shoujo you could do a lot worse.
Potential: 5%
Wooper: In order to keep our first impressions manageable, I typically go through each season’s full release schedule and pick a handful of shows to exclude. There are several mahou shoujo series airing this fall, so I chose one of them, Kabushikigaisha Magi-Lumiere (the PV for which was overrun with ugly 3DCG effects), to receive the axe. After watching Acro Trip, though, I wonder if I shouldn’t have chosen it instead – not because it was terrible, but because it’s not all that noteworthy. I say that having seen only the first of its two-part premiere, but it’s easy to guess where the series is headed even without watching that second half hour; the main character, a superfan of a magical girl named Berry Blossom, is going to team up with Berry’s incompetent nemesis in order to make her battles more exciting, and thus increase her appeal. We’ve been getting more anime like this in recent years – twists on isekai, super sentai, and mahou shoujo formulas where a character’s knowledge of or enthusiasm for a genre shapes their place within the story. Acro Trip is a middling entry in that subcategory, I’m afraid, with unexciting production and the sort of quiet vibe that sits at odds with its meta premise. With the exception of the relationship between the main girl and her grandpa (which actually benefited from that hushed atmosphere), I didn’t detect much here that might bring me back for part two.
Potential: 15%
As someone who has read the first 8 volumes of the manga I can assure you both that the ecchi stuff us overshadowed greatly by the banter between the (mostly) likeable cast and the insane situations they find themselves in. I have heard of much worse D jokes but they first “meeting ” with the aliens did male me feels uncomfortable.