Qualidea code
Short Synopsis: School students need to defend the world from a dark alien threat.
This odd in the fact that I can tell effort went into the characters and writing but it’s all really for naught when the story is so highly generic that it all feels like it’s been done to death. The characters are stereotypes but there is an attempt to make them stand out. It’s rather irritating in you can see that the writers are trying but their effort is just bringing forth a story we have seen a dozen times before. There are some pretty grievous animation errors and the plot of today’s episode just comes across as average at best. Despite the intensity of the opening scene, there doesn’t seem to be any real threat from these alien invaders. As students seem to just mess around like they are on some kind of field trip. There’s one thing however that has me somewhat curious and that is the tone of the episodes ending. It hints that there is something wrong with their current world and that it’s not all it seems. Perhaps this was made intentional generic and we could be looking at a genre deconstruction? It would be nice if that was the case but it’s a slim hope. If qualidea code continues to be what it currently is, then it’s not worth your time.
Potential: 40%
Mario’s thoughts:
I always have rather mixed feeling about the supergroups project, a show where multi-talented writers write their own characters/ city and then paste them up together, and the result is more likely to be a disaster with no personality from any of the writers whatsoever (read: Chaos Dragon). This episode’s main conflict so far reflects the struggle of supergroup very well. Individually, each team has its own distinctive sides and well-defined archetypical characters (the Overachievers – The Idiots- The Lazy). Each group has their own costume designs, their own fighting styles and their own personalities. But to put them together, and the whole things don’t really add up. I like that while this episode shows the teams battle with the Unknown creatures, the main conflict here is internal, and I definitely prefer internal conflict than the threats of alien. The story so far is as generic as possible. I don’t feel there is a lot of potential on this one.
Potential: 30%
Hitori no Shita: The Outcast
Short Synopsis: A boy returns to his childhood home when his grandfather’s grave has been dug up by a mysterious person.
Another surprise entry I didn’t see coming in my preview but in this case it’s not a particularly notable one. For one when I started watching it I suddenly realised that I had read the start of the manga/webcomic before. I started it because it had some interesting cover art but then it turned out to be something far less interesting than I expected. So we have zombies and a socially awkward girl who fights them. Plus our main character has lightning powers, I think. I will give it points for having a college student instead of a high school student but other than that this looks to be going do a road traveled far too often. The characters lack a unique kick and the comedy is sad rather than funny. This is just ok but it doesn’t give the viewer any real reason to continue.
Potential: 10%
Mario’s thoughts:
I see that this one is produced by Haoliners, the Chinese anime company I had covered before. This show so far looks to be Haoliners’ standard, both in terms of story and production values, so if you haven’t checked the company before, just try this one to see if you like it. For me though this show is a mixed bag, while I like the (brief) fight scene and the supernatural twist to the story, the rest of the show is just meh. The girl unfortunately comes off as one note as possible, the jokes don’t land very well and the whole thing so far is kinda slow. The main storyline, on the other hand, could be interesting the more we learn about what the gifted nature of our main guy, plus that the production values is quite solid. I think this might get interesting later on but sadly this is not my kind of show so I’ll give it a pass.
Potential: 10%
Ange Vierge
Short Synopsis: A group of girls on a island fight off alien threats and each other to get a high rank.
Out of all the series on this list so far, this has to be the worst written of them all. It hits a number of my usual checklist of first episode mistakes. One, throwing characters into an action scene right off the bat without establishing context, characterisation or purpose. Two, establishing the setting through a sloppy exposition dump. Three, pointless fanservice. Four, far too many characters. Five, filling your dialogue with codewords and terminology which hasn’t been explained or could easily be replaced with an already established term.(I shook my head when they needed to put a term to the end of the world by labeling it, World end. Thats stupid and I am pretty sure apocalypse would suffice.) There is a lot of negatives here and pretty much nothing I can praise. Our main girl is sad because she got a superpower straight out of nowhere and though it made her better than everyone else. Turns out it didn’t and she’s all disappointed to which I say she can go to hell. The majority of this episode is girls talking in the bath and all about the exact same thing. How the battle went and how one of them wants to ask a favor. Despite getting a terrible exposition dump, the most important questions are not answered such as. How does setting up teams of superpowered girls stop a giant gateway from ending the world? Who are these girls fighting? Why are they fighting each other and why is everyone concerned with getting a higher rank? The series itself tries to wave off these questions as a character asked who they are fighting only to get brushed off by saying “Who cares? They come, we fight them.” This is garbage, don’t give it the time of day.
Potential: 0%
Mario’s thoughts:
This is an adaption from card games and most of the times it’s a bad sign. Ange Vierge looks to be in that path unfortunately, as I can see nothing stands out from its first episode. The show already starts with some random fights, the number of girls we encounter this week exceeds my fingers’ count, each of them is generic to the point that when the fight near the end between two teams begins (for no more reason than to boost up their ranks), I have a hard time identify which characters are from which team, nor do I care. To make the matter worse, they spend most of the time naked, and our main character, besides being annoying, reveals to us that she “suddenly” gets the gifts. Well when you get something that you don’t even try to, what is the point of feeling special? I will stop for now as keep dwelling on it required too much effort. This is an easy skip.
Potential: 0%
