Gingitsune – 02

by psgels, posted in Gingitsune

I know my taste is really weird and all, but am I the only one who finds this show adorable?

The second episode again did not disappoint, and in one episode it created another really relatable character, plus it also built further upon the characters we saw in the first episode. Another great sign: this series doesn’t treat its characters as plot devices that only have one episode of development each.

To me, what Gingitsune does really well is create drama: it’s simple and to the point, yet poignant. There are times that are a tad too dramatic, but it’s nothing major. It’s mostly teenaged drama, but to balance that out is that fox, who still is my favorite character of the game. The wisdom he sprouts is just adorable and manages to create a good counterweight to all of the teenaged drama. And at the same time, he’s a central character to this series, so he’s not like your standard mentor, or “old guy who just watches young ones do stuff”.
Rating: 5/8 (Great)

Copellion – 02

by psgels, posted in Copellion

Copellion’s setting is great. The first episode really had me sold with its atmosphere. The second episode unfortunately was a step down, but I’m still quite positive here.

I like the post-apocalyptic setting here, and how desolate it is. And what this episode did well was how it showed how the few people who still remain at Tokyo are coming by. That’s great, and it was done quite convincingly. This series has a knack for painting the whole area as this desolate environment in which hardly anything lives, and it did this much better than a lot of other post apocalyptic series in this area. Heck, I can even believe the reason for the main characters to be young in this series: they’re clones specifically designed for taking on the hostile environment. You can’t wait for them to grow up to be thirty or something. I’m not sure why they had to wear the schoolgirl uniforms though.

What bugged me about this episode was the drama. Dear god, please lay it off with the cheese, will you? In comparison where Nagi no Asukara tries to balance its heavy drama out with different kinds of drama, this was all crying about the same thing over and over, it was just constantly gloomy and characters out of nowhere would go onto huge emotionally charged monologues about why things were so sad, in a way that broke my suspense of disbelief. This really needs to be done better in the future episodes, but who knows what kinds of effects this will have in the future?

Oh, and on a side-note: after watching the first episodes of all of the new series this season, I can say this confidently now: Copellion has the best ED of them all. The song is also better than all of the OP sons that we’ve got.
Rating: 4.5/8 (Good)

Seasonal Anime Podcast – First Impressions – 2013 Fall Anime Season

by psgels, posted in Currently Watching:

Hey everyone, I participated in a podcast again, together with Deadlights (Deadlight’s Anime Blog) Flawfinder (Standing on my Neck) and Slashe (Behind the Nihon Review)
with two new members, Landon (Mecha Guignol) and Tom (Nigorimasen)

Today we talked about the past Fall season. You can find the link here, enjoy:

http://deadlightanime.blogspot.nl/2013/10/seasonal-anime-podcast-first_12.html

Nagi no Asukara – 02

by psgels, posted in Nagi no Asukara

So, Nagi no Asukara (apologies, I keep spelling the title of this series wrong) had an interesting second episode. The main character in particular was really unlikable and for a short while I thought of just switching this episode off, however he did somehow work as the episode went along.

Flawed characters are really difficult to write: it’s all too easy to make them too annoying to watch, however you NEED flaws for good storytelling, otherwise things will be too perfect and just boring. It’s often a case of balancing things out, and the way most series do it is by giving characters a simple innocent flaw that doesn’t stand out too much, or things like naivety or something. Mr Sparkly Eyes (I really forgot his name) yells, moans, acts like a spoilt child throughout this entire episode.

Somehow this was balanced out by the rest of the cast who keep pulling this guy back to the surface. The bit around his sister worked really well, and by showing how the adults in the underwater community are even more bigoted than he is when they found out really helped by showing him things from a different perspective. He feels like he owns that girl, and these episodes are really trying to break away from that. The second half of this episode also cleverly juggled the drama of the rest of the characters together, and that actually made quite an impression on me. If the creators can keep this up things will get interesting.
Rating: 4,5/8 (Good)

Kill La Kill – 02 – And a whole bunch of other stuff as well

by psgels, posted in Kill La Kill

I’m going to hijack this post in order to write down my thoughts on a question that has me stumped in nearly every season: What the hell am I going to blog?

So with my mind on the past first episodes, I need to figure out: which series are interesting to talk about on a weekly basis? This season is exceptionally difficult, because there are just so many good series. It usually takes me quite a while to figure this out. Usually I keep this outside of the blog and to myself, but what the heck, this time I’m going to write down my thought process here.

Let’s start with the obvious ones: the kiddie shows and all of the bad shows I’m not going to even give a second chance: Miss Monochrome, Outbreak Company, Yuusha Blahblah, Strike the Blood, that Wresling Show, Walkure Romanze, Unbreakable Machine Doll, you are out and you should be ashamed of yourself. Also I will not have time for the series that showed only a tiny bit of potential, there’s just too much competition; so goodbye, Super Seisyun Brothers, Diabolik Lovers, Log Horizon, Ace of Diamond, Meganebu and Non Non Biyori. Sorry if you’re a fan of these series, but this season is just too damn large.

Okay, as for the rest: the top of the season is always fun to blog. Kyousogiga, Yozakura Quartet and Samurai Flamency all seem wonderful, so they’re all going to be blogged. I’m also going to throw in Galilei Donna because of its ambition: those shows are also great to cover.

Then there is a group of very promising sequels: Teekyu, Little Busters, Phi Brain, Hajime no Ippo and White Album. I don’t think I can consistently write about these, however for these series I’m going to do a Kaleidoscope this season, because they deserve the attention and I do want to talk about them slightly.

Then there is a group of series that is in the danger zone of being dropped if their second episode disappoints: Kyoukai no Kanata, Ore no Nounai, Tokyo Ravens, Blazblue, Yowamushi Pedal, Arpeggio and Golden Time. As of this writing I have watched Kyoukai no Kanata (dropped; the characters were too annying) and Golden Time (keeper, but not interesting enough to blog). All these series have the potential to be great as long as they aren’t held back, but I don’t believe that that potential will be enough to be worth blogging.

This leaves the foursome of Kill La Kill, Copellion, Nagi no Asukura and Gingitsune. And this really has me in a bind. All of them had smashing first episodes, Kill la Kill and Nagi no Asukura will run for two cours, Gingitsune and Copellion for just one (I heard someone say that Gingitsune will run for 21 episodes, but the amount of scheduled DVDs suggest otherwise), yet they all have their significant flaws: Kill la Kill and Gingitsune have their simplified story, while Copellion and Nagi no Asukura’s problem is that they’re way too dramatic.

At the moment of writing, I’ve seen episode 2 of Kill la Kill and Copellion. The latter made this process really difficult because I was really surprised with how the characters were overacting there. Ultimately though, I figured that I should not let overacting play a factor in this. I have complained about overacting in the past before, and I’ve been proven wrong many times. Overacting in one episode an sich isn’t a sign that we’re dealing with a series that will crash and burn to death. A bigger indicator is a wrong focus or lackluster direction, and I’m not yet seeing that with any of these four here. But the thing is that I also don’t want to blog nine shows at the same timewhile also doing a kaleidoscope: that will be too much.

So here’s what I think I’m going to do: I’m going to rigorously blog the big three of this season, and probably Galilei Donna as well. I’ll try to cover these as much as possible, and after that I’ll try to do blog Gingitsune, Copellion, Kill la Kill and Nagi no Asukura, putting the episodes I can’t cover in something like the kaleidoscope, along with the five sequels and any other show that doesn’t end up dropped. These will basically be my priorities this season.

In the meantime, I’m going to put Uchuu Kyoudai on hold for blogging. It used to be my favourite, but here is the thing: I endorse experimentation, I endorse studios trying out new stuff, and pushing the anime industry further. At this point, Uchuu Kyoudai isn’t doing that anymore, and it’s just running for running’s sake, as good as the content may still be. It’s stopped being fun to blog after complaining about the pacing issues over and over. We finally have a season again with so much fresh new content, and a chance to show what some excellent OVAs can really do with the time of a full series. I’d rather to spend my attention on that, even though Uchuu Kyoudai is still setting the example of having a significantly older cast.

So yeah… Kill la Kill. Nearly forgot about that one. The thing with this series indeed is that it’s going to have to find a way to make up for its overall plot: it’s simple, and most likely going to be predictable. My big problem with Gurren Lagann was that it couldn’t keep itself interesting enough. With this series I have hope though, because the chemistry between the characters is a lot more fun, and the creators clearly seem to want to go all-out. The biggest trap at the moment for them is running into a routine. I’m fine with having a formula of having to fight a bunch of people with wacky powers, but make each of those people count: make every fight something really entertaining.

The firs two episodes really managed to do that. While not as versatile as Kyousogiga or Yozakura Quartet, this episode stood out in its sheer insanity and how it brought tennis to a whole different level. I also like how most of the characters in this series also have no clue what’s going on, and they’re just going along with things.
Rating: 5.5/8 (Excellent)

Some Quick First Impressions: Galilei Donna, Samurai Flamenco and Ore no Nounai Sentakushi ga, Gakuen Love Come o Zenryoku de Jama Shiteiru

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Galilei Donna

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters are the descendants of Galileo Galilei.
Aah, this will be one of those series: the type of anime with lots of ambition, with a very short airing length and a very inconsistent execution. Lots of stuff is added, some which works really well and others which are… questionable. Sometimes they work out quite well, like with Gatchaman Crowds, at others they bomb horribly, like what happened with Fractale. Galilei Donna has tons of ideas. I like how it tries to have a diverse cast: the main characters are a middle schooler, a high schooler and a college student, and it managed to really show how all of them are in different stages of their lives. On top of that their parents also play a really big role in this show and they too are unique. The action is the same: at its worst it’s badly animated CG fluff. At its best it’s a really engaging thriller with intense animation. The characters? At their best they really are likeable and engaging. At their worst we have a middle schooler piloting all sorts of crazy mecha. The plot of this episode was the same. But here is the thing: I’d much rather have this, than a show that doesn’t have any ambition at all. In the past I have shown a ton of support for these kinds of series and I will continue to do that, because experiments like these are just so interesting to watch. After all, the more ambitious you are, the more things that can go wrong. Screw playing safe! Let’s go crazy!
OP: This would have been the best OP of the season if it just ran for half a minute longer. Now the song just ends in the middle of the best part.
ED: A pretty standard ED.
Potential: 80%

Samurai Flamenco

Short Synopsis: Our lead character meets this weirdo who wants to be a superhero.
This series has the potential to become something really special. It’s an original story, probably 22 episodes long. To me, this series stands at the top of the season, along with Kyousogiga and Yozakura Quartet, though unlike those two it’s much more grounded into reality. The thing that’s immediately noticeable here is how good the two main characters are: both adults with jobs and lives and histories. And the chemistry between them is just hilarious: the two of them fit together really well. But here’s what really sold me on this series: the way it deconstructs the superhero genre. Forget those fancy promo images that this series advertised itself with. That’s just a show within a show. This series is about a cop, and a wannabe superhero, and this episode really proceeded to drive home that you should leave heroism to the people who actually know their stuff. Within one episode it already managed to drive hom a great theme and message. Let alone what it can do with 22.
OP: The best OP song of the season I guess. Not like the competition was particularly great though…
ED: Generic poppy ED with the girls of the show who didn’t even make an appearance yet.
Potential: 90%

Ore no Nounai Sentakushi ga, Gakuen Love Come o Zenryoku de Jama Shiteiru

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets hit by a girl falling from the sky.
Well. This series was one of the biggest surprises I have had in years while doing these first impressions. And I’m not kidding. The premise of this series is a horrible excuse to make a cute girl fall from the sky and do the bidding of the main character. It looks and sounds exactly like your umpth obnoxious harem show. Every single character is your obnoxious harem cliché that has been done to death, and all of the female characters have these annoying squeaky voices. This should have been utterly horrible. This should have been a contender with Yuusha Blahblah and Walkure Romanze for the worst show of the season. And yet the creators gave it the best rendition that it possibly could have had with these horrible ingredients. This episode had me in stitches. I laughed so hard at times. I’m not going to spoil why. I just applaud this show for doing what I thought was impossible.
OP: FANSERVICE
ED: Live action used well? In a series like this?
Potential: 80%

Kyousogiga – 01

by psgels, posted in Kyousogiga

Finally. After a virtually empty Winter Season, the worst spring season in more than 10 years, and a merely average summer season, we’ve actually got ourselves a really awesome season here in 2013. Lots of series made a really positive and really strong first impression, so let’s hope that they can keep all of that up. One series that didn’t was Kyoukai no Kanata for me. As good as the animation may have been, it was just bland, the characters were annoying, and it lacked anything to keep me engaged.

Out of all these wonderful and creative series though, the best first episode belongs to Kyousogiga, if you ignore episode 00, which was pretty much just the OVA (even though that one was really good too). It may not have the most frames of animation, but out of all the new series this season, it has the most heart put into it. This episode really shined in every single way.

I’ve seen people note how I don’t talk about what Kyousogiga is… but the thing is: I find it really hard to describe that in just a few sentences. I guess it’s about this bunch of people with supernatural powers living in this strange city where stuff happens and things, but that would do it a huge disservice. It’s Toei’s experimental depart just toying around and unleashing their creativity onto this short little series, but even that would be doing the characters a huge disservice. Even after this episode, I still can’t accurately describe ‘what’ this series is.

But considering the OVAs, this pretty much was the perfect episode they could have followed up with: it’s the episode that explains the background of the series: where did all of the characters come from? What is the world the characters live in? This episode shed lights to that, and I love some of the ideas they threw in. The key being this monk who can breathe life to whatever he draws (how’s that for an awesome idea!), creating a family along the years. The series also seems to be based on all these kinds of different worlds that coexist next to each other, with a central world being the main hub, it seems. I first thought that the lead female (who we only see in one minute in this episode by the way) was also the daughter of that rabbit-woman, but it turns out that she came from this central world in order to search for someone.

But how heart-warming was this episode: the whole monk’s family was so endearing, especially since we know how different the three kids ended up growing up. The characters all had wonderful chemistry together. But here is also one thing: the amount of details that the creators managed to stuff into just this episode is astounding. The budget may not have been as big as with the OVA, but every single shot here is creative. The direction is also fantastic: the animators really have this knack of saying a ton fo stuff with just a few images. And they just keep throwing these at the screen over and over, even in a slower pacing.

And the soundtrack. Definitely the best soundtrack of the season!
Rating: 6/8 (Awesome)

Some Quick First Impressions: Blazblue – Alter Memory, Tokyo Ravens and Yowamushi Pedal

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Blazblue – Alter Memory

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has a powerful right hand of doom.
This season sure likes its “really sad flashbacks in the middle of fire”-cliches. This was like, the fourth show that had one? – Anyway, silly trends aside: I’m blank on this one. This show has some action scenes (which weren’t bad by the way), but it’s supposed to be a game adaptation. This did not feel like a game. It also didn’t really feel like the creators were stuffing way too much or too little in the first episode: it’s a perfectly fine episode to start off with with a lot of hints for the future of the plot and the set-up for the characters and the setting (which have a few neat ideas in them by the way). It jumped from scene to scene, but in actually a comprehensible way, rather than making it seem like the story was flying through everything. The characters also have slightly more charm than what I expected from a game adaptation as well. It at times made no sense, but that too wasn’t in a bad way: this episode raised a lot of questions that all look like they can be answered as the show goes along. It’s also good to have a main character as an adult (please tell me that this guy is at least older than 18…). The thing here is that most of this episode was bland, but I saw small hints of interesting stuff like mentioned above. And then there was that preview for the next episode that I happened to watch. A hint, or just a cry of despair?
OP: Quite a standard OP song.
ED: Nice art, bland song.
Potential: 75%

Tokyo Ravens

Short Synopsis: Our lead character can be an Omnyouji.
This one turned out a bit different from what I expected. I thought that this would be another one of those immature shows about a bunch of kids fighting with onmyouji powers. And while this series is indeed a show that features a bunch of teenagers fighting with omnyouji powers, there was a surprising amount of time dedicated to drama, and pretty decent drama at that. You know that with all the fanservice shows, this has been the first one to feature an actual kiss? And there isn’t even much other fanservice in this episode, with most of it being at least a bit more subtle than a horny horse with a craving for skirts. The strange thing with this series is that it knows that it has cliches, but it dances around them, instead of addresing them directly. Well, this episode did at least. I’m not sure whether the creators intend to do that for the entire series.
OP: Not bad, but still not the great ED I’ve been waiting for.
ED: Nice artistic direction there.
Potential: 75%

Yowamushi Pedal

Short Synopsis: Our lead character likes anime.
Why does anime have this fixation with idiots? I mean, isn’t it much more fun to watch actually smart people do stuff? What makes things even worse is that most idiots in anime are also mind-numbingly stupid. Yowamushi Pedal: I found the experienced bikers much more interesting to watch: someone who has been training for years, with a love and passion for the sport, held back by his own pride and having this really good rival as a roadblock. But no, the main character is this kid who lives entirely in his own world, refuses to think straight and who just happens to be really good at cycling. This really is the prime example of a series with the “bad main character”-syndrome, because the rest of the cast: I don’t mind them, and they seem interesting from what we’ve seen of them. Even the female lead, even though she’s held back a lot by her cliche of being the token female in a sports series who can’t compete and therefore just ends up being a manager. Is it that weird to have both a male and a female team? Despite these criticism though, I do have one positive thing to say about this series: I would not be surprised if this was inspired by Kuroko no Basuke, but where Kuroko did not motivate me to keep watching, this episode of Yowamushi Pedal did. Damn you cliff-hanger!
OP: Generic shounen opening with lots of modern speedlines that don’t fit their context.
ED: Generic ending. Come on. Please. Give me at least one great opening or ending this season. Just one that dares to be different and unique.
Potential: 70%

Pokemon: The Origin Review – 75/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews

Normally I try to avoid spoilers with these reviews, but screw it, it’s Pokemon. Pokemon The Origin is a bomb of nostalgia. If you haven’t played Pokemon Red, Blue or Green, then you will not enjoy this one slight bit. This really is made as pure undilluted fanservice for the fans of the first games. Pokemon was the first anime that I watched on Dutch television that made me aware of the existance of anime. Pokemon Yellow was the game that had me hooked, more than any other game when I was younger. So yeah, I am a fan, Pokemon holds an irreplaceable part in my childhood. And biased.

Here’s the interesting bit about this OVA: it’s got so many things that the television-series did really badly. And yet at the same time, it’s got some huge flaws that the TV-series was better at.

Let me start with the positives: finally, after more than a decade of pokemon, we’ve got it: a Pokemon anime without Ash. Team Rocket is present, but Jesse, James and Meowth are completely gone. in fact, the only regular characters who do return are Giovanni, Professor Oak, and Brock and Misty as Gym Leaders. This is what I’ve been waiting for: the pokemon universe is open to so many different stories and interpretations, so it sucks that it always has to be the same thing. I gave up on it years ago for a reason.

Next up: the length. At four episodes of just 20 minutes, finally Pokemon has come in bite-size chunks. The TV-series was absolutely notorious for wasting time, for running for way too long and including so many pointless stories that dilluted the experience. In these four episodes the creators picked the best parts of the game and brought that to animation.

All of the characters, in terms of acting at least improved from what we’ve seen of them: Giovanni actually has a personality, Brock stopped being the womanizer and now is just a gym leader, and all of the pokemon stopped trying to look and sound cute. They behave much more like animals. Heck, there was one brief appearance of Pikachu, and somehow the creators managed to give it mouse noises. That is one thing that I did not expect them to get past the marketing machine.

Now, the bad stuff: you obviously can’t stuff one entire game in four episodes. The solution of the creators is to have Red recap the things that happened off-screen. Great for fans of the game, but anyone not familiar will just scratch their head, wondering what the hell is going on. The only single reason I tolerate this is because it’s pokemon: any other show attempting this would have not worked at all. Adaptations need to stand alone, not give the message of “you need to check out the game/manga/whatever if you want the complete story”.

What also stood out was that this OVA became quite a good example of the difference in adaptations between today and fifteen years ago: adaptations today follow much closer to their original source material. On one hand this creates less obnoxious filler, but on the other hand this also limits the creators when they take over something stupid, or something that doesn’t work. This stands out especially in game adaptations.

There’s something bizarre in the entire game meta being visible in these OVAs, like pokemon have life bars now, they talk about level. People hand out sics with moves on them. Oh, and the battles themselves also become really weird because of this where the main focus is adhering to the game rules, rather than common sense. Take the fight against Brock for example: oh yeah, it may follow the game’s rules and all, but what we saw there was the equivalent of a big tank being drop-kicked by a hamster. Pikachu’s victory against the Onyx actually made sense. You can give the original series a lot of flack, but at least they looked at the different powers and used their heads, whereas in The Origins you have a Charizard whose tail keeps burning even when he’s underwater.

The characters also really suffered, and the creators I think made the explicit decision not to flesh them out or give them much depth. They get all their depth from the nostalgia with the games. This worked particularly strange with Giovanni, who behaves really weird throughout the parts he’s featured in. Heck, he loses to a kid and just abolishes his entire organization, even though losing to a kid just a few minutes earlier did nothing to him. But yeah, this entive OVA fails to make any ounce of sense. The original series has more logic in it than what we saw here.

But here’s the thing: When I first learned of this OVA, I imagined that it would be this big budgetted OVA, or at least something really solid. This was everything but solid, and the animation budget in particular wasn’t that impressive. This leads me to believe that this was a simple experiment: a test to see whether it’s worth it to also cater to the older fans of Pokemon. A pilot, if you will. And that idea, I really support.

Pokemon deserves to have some stories in it that target a different demographic than the usual kids. There are plenty of adult players who would like to see a more mature storyline animated, I would definitely see a market for that. For future experiments, I would really suggest: try sometihng standalone. Don’t depend on the games. Make sense. Take yourself seriously. Have a main character who isn’t a kid. I know that the last point is really stretching it, but hey you made Pikachu talk like a mouse, so apparently you do have freedom.
One-Sentence Review: A nostalgia bomb and not much more; do not watch if you haven’t played Pokemon Red, Blue or Green.
Suggestions:
– Pokemon, The Indigo League Season

Some Quick First Impressions: Unbreakable Machine Doll, Non Non Biyori and Arpeggio of Blue Steel – Ars Nova

by psgels, posted in Some Quick First Impressions

Unbreakable Machine Doll

Short Synopsis: Our lead character’s girlfriend is a magic fighting doll.
Wel… it’s not the worst thing of this season. Its plot at the very least is guided by “some” logic. Not much, but I’ve seen worse! I still see no hope in this one though, for the usual reasons: bland cast, bland premise, no hints whatsoever that it can get some good things out of its characters nor plot, and the action itself also has nothing to write home about. Beyond that, the characters remain really stereotypical without much soul, and all of the action scenes make no sense whatsoever. I know this series uses magic and all, but even then there are some thing sthat you just need to hide better. To me this feels like the creators were just animating it for the heck of it without really spending time on thinking how to make it work or how to polish it. Moving on.
ED: Bad song, bland animation.
Potential: 0%

Non Non Biyori

Short Synopsis: Our lead characters live in the country.
Quite unexpectedly, Non Non Biyori was a huge nostalgic trip to my childhood for me. At times it lost itself a bit in its comedy, or attempt to be heart-warming, but at its best points, this episode just forcefully dived into my head when I was a child. I personally grew up in the countryside, so I can really relate to some of the things they talked about, like not locking your doors, having small schools, or how if you drive 50 km per hour, you will reach 50 kilometers after an hour (shut up, I was young!). My point is: this show captures being a kid more than any other series of the recent years about just a bunch of kids growing up and nothing more. It doesn’t aim at the complete picture, but it doesn’t lay things too thick or too thin. It doesn’t focus on the darker parts of being a kid, just the random ones and with that it doesn’t lay things on too thick, which is a problem that most other series of its caliber have; even Tamayura wasn’t really realistic due to how forced its drama was at times. And yet despite that, I had trouble to not fall asleep.
OP: Not bad. I like the singer of this, but I forgot her name.
ED: Oh boy. Next time try to leave the singing to people who can actually do it…
Potential: 75%

Arpeggio of Blue Steel – Ars Nova

Short Synopsis: Our lead character gets to command a cute girl. And a submarine.
Arpeggio is cell shaded 3D CG. Okay, I did not expect that. The creators did well in their attempts to hide this… but it still stands out and the animation is in this uncanny valley in which the characters all have these creepy stares. Now, if the rest of the series was good, then this could be perfectly excused… but I’ve got a big “meh” impression from all of it. Yeah, the action is decent, but nothing special. The characters are virtually nonexistent aside from the lead couple, and they… just interact with each other. Nothing more nothing less. The story is the standard Yamato-inspired series: humanity is screwed until a single traitor from the bad guys joins the good guys giving them superior technology that kicks ass. There’s nothing that really stands out in any way here. If you want a good series about submarines: watch either Blue Submarine No6 or Fushigi no Umi no Nadia. This one… this episode was bland and I saw no hints about it not being bland in the future.
ED: I assume that this will be the OP for this series, and it’s just copied and pasted from other OPs. Seriously, what the hell happened to the awesome OPs here? Even the best OPs this season just stood out due to animation. Gone are the openings based on great ideas or with a strong artistic vision behind them. What gives?
Potential: 50%