As for the series I’m not going to blog:
– Mayoi Neko Overrun’s second episode was actually pretty terrible. Badly produced and every way as obnoxious and unfunny as I originally feared it to be.
In any case, Night Raid is going to be the 10th series that I’ll be blogging this series (I guess it’s pretty obvious what number 11 and 12 are going to be with the way that I’ve kept hyping them), but do note that there’s a good chance that I’ll drop it if either Uragiri or Rainbow’s second episodes are really good, because I do have my problems with it.
First of all there is of course the cheese, which doesn’t exactly mix well with the mature setting that the series is trying to portray. Here we have an original series about international spies, and the best thing would obviously be if
the creators really took their liberties and delivered a series about actual spies: the way they operate and blend into a crowd. But alas, instead we get a supernatural adventure series in which the characters edge more to James Bond than actual spies.
But yeah, that doesn’t mean that the series can’t be awesome. And really, the script for this series is excellent when you look at this as a fantasy-series. The writers don’t excel in their research, but rather their imagination. By now it has already shown that background is very important, and so we get to see a ton of flashbacks.
Here’s one of my big issues with this series, though: this feels like a series that has a great script, but not the means to execute it. Because A-1 Pictures has had to handle so many series this season, I already feared this, but they just don’t have enough manpower to make each of their series excel. Ookiku Furikabutte is as well animated as ever, and I’m sure that Working also has no problems in the graphics department, but with Senkou no Night Raid feels to have received the shortest straw here in terms of A-1’s best staff. Because of that, the acting feels a bit shoddy. The lead characters also doesn’t really help when he’s got voice actors who can’t act half of the time, trying to fluently speak three different languages (to the Russian people who happen to visit this site: how bad was his pronunciation this time?). And then there’s the young teleporting-guy, whose voice actor really hams it up pretty badly.
Plus, this show only has 13 episodes, which is probably my biggest issue with the series at this point: with such a short series, will it be able to deliver, or just end up as another spy flick? I’m especially worried due to the “spy of the week”-theme. I may seem strict and nit-picky in this entry, but with a season in which there are a ton of shows that have big potential among big flaws, I really want to be able to pick out the best ones. Night Raid, more than any other series this season, has a setting that screams “take me seriously”, and therefore I’m currently taking it more seriously than if it just pretended to be a fun action-flick where the main point is to kill bad guys.
Rating: (Enjoyable)
lead characters also doesn’t really help when he’s got voice actors who can’t act half of the time
shame on you psgels, that guy the same guy who voice Firo from baccano.
people who complaint the bad Chinese surely just trolling, it ain’t any worst than bad English, you see in every anime
I haven’t seen the episode yet, but I can’t make myself care enough about the bad Chinese/Russian/whatever pronunciation. I agree with reverse, it’s the same thing as bad English. You can’t expect the voice actor to suddenly be fluent in Chinese/Russian.
However, I agree with psgels about Namikawa Daisuke. He’s hamming it up and it’s fairly annoying.
well from the first episode, there was one guy who was surprisingly good at speaking Chinese, and the others were really bad, so I found that really funny lol. But the pronounciation or such never really bothered me. It’s a fictional world, so they can speak whatever mangled version of language they want and I can believe it’s that world’s version of the language, so it really doesn’t matter. Acting, however, is a different issue.
What series are you hyping up for your 11th or 12th contestant this spring again? I read through your recent entries and couldn’t really find any hint. Well it seems like they haven’t aired yet so I would guess House of Five Leaves and Yojo-han? Unless you’re including OVAs/specials among these series?
Re: your question about how good the Russian was.
The maestro’s Russian seemed native to me, even had the proper high society air. The Japanese guy’s ranged from passable to pretty good in some parts to almost incomprehensible in others (mostly where he had to pronounce difficult letter combinations). I was able to decipher everything after a few re-listens, but in a normal conversation I’d expect a Russian person would need to ask him to repeat some of the words. The lines themselves were proper Russian, only the first part of the response to the knock seemed a little odd, as though translated without knowing the situation it was to be used in.
Change that to “in a normal conversation I’d expect a Russian person would need to ask him to repeat some of the words, unless they were accustomed to all kinds of “foreigner Russian”, like this man probably was”
“Ookiku Furikabutte is as well animated as ever, and I’m sure that Working also has no problems in the graphics department, but with Senkou no Night Raid feels to have received the shortest straw here in terms of A-1’s best staff.”
I disagree on A-1’s visuals for this compared to their other two shows and this show’s visuals is the strongest on atmosphere and “setting/location creation” among them as well, both backgrounds and character animation, the dvds/blu-rays will probably help with the overall darkness level as well. The color style of Working is quite nice though it’s not my kind of show, but it does catch the eye.
“Ookiku Furikabutte is as well animated as ever, and I’m sure that Working also has no problems in the graphics department, but with Senkou no Night Raid feels to have received the shortest straw here in terms of A-1’s best staff.”
I disagree on A-1’s visuals for this compared to their other two shows and this show’s visuals is the strongest on atmosphere and “setting/location creation” among them as well, both backgrounds and character animation, the dvds/blu-rays will probably help with the overall darkness level as well. The color style of Working is quite nice though it’s not my kind of show, but it does catch the eye.
Oops, sorry for the double! The browser froze on the captcha screen so I didn’t think it went through.
Oh yeah, I agree, I hope they intend for this to be more than 13 though, these espionage type shows are at their best with more time.
The Chinese was so bad even the side characters spoke better Chinese lol, I was biting my lip trying to not laugh
yeah,i have to disagree with you here as well.Senkou maybe short in terms in staff…but it really have the best graphic of all three A-1 Picture’s series this season – comparable even to last season’s Sora no Oto
what’s your 11 and 12? House of 5 leaves and Yojo-han ?
11 & 12 has to be those two. Those are the only series that haven’t aired yet and they stood out the most to me in this season’s preview, so I’m looking forward to them as well.
While one certainly can’t expect a voice actor to suddenly become fluent in different languages, there is also the option of choosing voice actors who know how to speak the language. Yeah it’s not easy to find people, but it makes the situation more believable (rather than say, a character visits US and everyone there speaks Engrish).
@reverse: Maybe I’m trolling, but I found it easier to understand the bad English in other anime other than the bad Mandarin in the first episode. I could only understand one line from the main characters LOL.
@answer: Thanks for answering, I was wondering that too 😀
@ves
So, how many voice actors you think there are in Japan who are fluent in Mandarin AND Russian (and who knows what else the character is supposed to speak)? (Or, for that matter, voice actors whose voice matches the character and just happen to be fluent in whatever foreign language needed.) Or what, do you think the foreign language parts should be played by different voice actors? Or that the writers should just stop creating characters who are fluent in foreign languages?
I just don’t understand why this bad Mandarin pronunciation has become such a huge issue. Anime has always featured bad foreign language pronunciation. It’s unfortunate but there you have it. You suspend your disbelief and move on. In Kill Bill Uma Thurman spoke way better Japanese than whatshername who played the Japanese yakuza woman, and I don’t remember anyone making such a fuss about it.
@kuromitsu
Hint hint, if you can’t speak proper japanese and mandarin or whatever language, don’t do it. How am I supposed to take the show seriously when it changes from serious to hilarious.
Right! Refuse a role (and the money you would be paid for it) because you would have to speak a few lines in a foreign language and some people may not like your pronunciation! (while most of the audience doesn’t actually give a damn.) You didn’t know you would have to speak foreign languages when you signed up? Quit, damn it!
Sure! 😀
after watching raw for this episode I kinda feel underwhelming for it. but now subs is out, damn this is good
According to Anime News Network, the maestro was indeed voiced by a native Russian named Aleksej Rachubo.
It did seem to me though that he was speaking a bit more slowly than how one normally would in real life.
So far enjoying the series, the lst ep had some shortcomings. But the 2nd ep made up for it!
So far enjoying the series, the lst ep had some shortcomings. But the 2nd ep made up for it!
I know I’m very late to the party here, but has anyone else noticed how absolutely awful the violin animation is? Not only did it seem unnatural whenever someone “played” a violin, but the animators didn’t even attempt to match the fingerings and bowings to the phrasing of the music. Particular laughable was the very first scene, where the girl repeats the same shift over and over about four times, even though it is completely different from the rhythm and intervals of the music in the background.
This is in no way unique to this show, though- nearly every anime that attempts to show violin-playing (I can recall Kuroshitsuji in particular, which probably did a worse job than Senkou No Night Raid) fails miserably at it. Nodame Cantabile made a passable compromise by using mostly still shots of the musicians, which I greatly preferred to seeing clumsy animation.
(Yeah, in case you can’t tell, I’m a pretty serious violinist, and trivial things like this become fixations for me.)
@traumae , yeah I definitely know what you mean. I got really annoyed by the lack of consistency during the violin scenes. The producers seem very ignorant in terms of violin-playing. It almost felt like:”Hey, I like the idea of using violins, let’s put that into the plot” without any (or very little) knowledge of violin-playing. Oh well…