Some Quick First Impressions: Ace Attorney(Gyakuten Saiban), JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure – Diamond is Unbreakable and Mayoiga

Ace Attorney(Gyakuten Saiban)

Short Synopsis: Our protagonist is a lawyer that says “Objection!!”

Its as I feared. For you see in video game adaptions you have to rip out a core part of the experience and pray that another aspect has enough strength to hold it’s own. In this case it clearly cannot do that as all tension was ripped from the situation. This is admittedly the tutorial case for the game and watching the anime it’s clear that an anime only watcher could notice that. The dialogue that clearly made reference to game mechanics and the visual text boxes that are clearly there for the fans of the games. In the games the tension of the case was there because it was you who was looking over the court record and finding inconsistencies in the witnesses statement. When you cut out that aspect it just feels like Phoenix(Calling him Naruhodo just feels weird to me) is pulling the answers out of nowhere with little effort. This could be remedied in future episodes as we follow him investigating the case but it won’t fix the problems in presentation. This entire episode just felt off. The beginnings pacing was too fast, the music felt inappropriate and terrible, art is passable at best and something wasn’t right about the animation. To me this feels like it wasn’t a top priority project for A-1 pictures and something about it just makes it seem lazy. But perhaps the fault simply is that Ace Attorney can’t transition to anime because it’s game format was an important part of it’s charm.

Potential: 30%

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure – Diamond is Unbreakable

Short Synopsis: Once again a new Jojo must face a Bizarre enemy

The first thing you will notice is the art style which is very evocative of the Bronze age of comic books. It takes some getting used to but it is a rather interesting style despite the strange use of colour. It seems I will be able to enjoy this series without watching the rest of stardust crusaders as we seem to be on a brand new storyline. My only question being just why is Jotaru’s cap fused with his skull? Did something happen or is that just a weird design choice? Either way this is looking to be a return to form for Jojo as our new protagonist has a much more interesting power and personality. His way of snapping when someone makes fun of his hair is quite amusing and the weird method he has of fighting opens up a whole new layer of possibilities with future encounters. The presentation is very old school and has a certain charm to it. If you seen Jojo you know what to expect here and I can say it’s still delivers on that. Whether it can keep up the steam depends on how this Arc turns out.

Potential: 70%

Mayoiga

Short Synopsis: A group of crazies are on a bus trip to a secret village to start their lives over.

While it hasn’t been confirmed, it looks to be certain this is a horror anime. For this episode has ominous vibes throughout and I like that. There is a lot of potential here in the eerie atmosphere and a huge cast full of mentally unstable characters each with their own problems. Of course because it’s such a huge cast there are a number of stereotypes present. A rapper, a chuunibyou, a delinquent, smart glasses guy…the anime spends five minutes just having each one introduce themselves. There are a few interesting one such as a girl with obsessive compulsive disorder and a girl wearing a hoodie who looks to know more about this than the others. I would complain that this is far too huge a cast for a twelve episode series but there are heavy hints that a lot of these people will be killed off. I am fairly interested in what is to come but I am also worried as horror such as this requires a subtle hand. Subtlety is not Okadas strong point. I like the foreshadowing this episode had but a lot of up was in your face. Such as two songs that happened to have grim lyrics and some pretty big signs that these people are already dead and this is some kind of purgatory. Okada is going to need to restrain herself and not up the melodrama to cartoonishly exaggerated degrees for this horror to be good. Still I wouldn’t mind a nice anime slasher flick myself either. There’s a lot to like here but I need to see just what Okada is going to do with this setup and characters. I hope she pulls through on this because anime horror is sorely needed by the medium.

Potential: 80%