Ayakashi
I originally classified this series as a Mushiuta-ripoff. Humans can be possessed by Ayakashi, which they can fully control but they must watch out not to use their powers too much otherwise they’ll die. Just replace “Ayakashi” with “Mushi” and “die” with “lose your soul”, and viola. After watching the first episode of Ayakashi, I wholeheartedly encourage you that if you want to get a taste of the premise: go for Mushiuta. The cast of Ayakashi is horribly bland and full of stereotypes. I also feel like it’s trying way too much to be shocking and dramatic: it’s only been one episode and people have already been slaughtered by cute school-girls and one guy got his nose cut off and his eyes poked out, for very weak and shallow reasons. I honestly don’t see any potential in this one, and the ugly character-designs also don’t help much to increase my opinion. You won’t see me recommending this one.
Kimi ga Nozomu Eien – Next Season
I watched the original Kimi ga Nozomu Eien a few years back, before starting this blog. The concept was great, though I didn’t really like the final episodes. Therefore, I like how Next Season is going to attempt to show a different ending for this series, this time from the Haruka-route of the original game. So far, I like it. The romance is well-developed, and the episode builds up pretty well for the twist at the end. I do have some criticism, though. It feels like this OVA is really made for the fans of the game. I have no idea what events in the series happened and didn’t happen. What changed Takayuki and Mitsuki so that they broke up together? The facial expressions also feel inappropriate at times, which distracts from the ongoing storyline.
Macross Frontier
I do want to note that this is the first time I’ve seen anything of the Macross-universe. It’s the same as with Gundam, Patlabor and Matsumoto Leiji: these franchises are just so big, that it’s going to take a lot of effort to catch up with everything. In any case, this episode literally shined with all kinds of flashy graphics, but I’m not yet impressed by the plot. It still has enough potential to become interesting later on, but the first episode was very much like an the first episode of any other average anime, where our main character suddenly has to protect someone and picks up a special weapon that happened to be lying around. The main character is another high-school student, as well, which doesn’t really work in the series’ advantage. The graphics are impressive, though. Now let’s hope that the plot won’t be sacrificed for it.
I watched the first ep of macross frontier as well and pretty much agree with you. it had some seriously impressive cg integration…the characters seem interesting so for the first ep but the plot is generic. here’s hoping, like yourself, that the plot becomes very interesting and less of the kid factor and more adults….
I totally agree with you on M Frontier – really hope this beautiful series doesn’t become cliche
If you’ve watched the original Macross series then this episode does show efforts to differentiate itself while giving some familiarity to current fans.
First of all, the singer/idol in the original Macross was definitely along the lines of being an ideal good girl or close. She had the intentions of using her song to inspire others.
In the first episode, we can already clearly see that the singer/idol of Frontier is not that type initially. She escapes and says it’s not her job to help people and that it should be left to the professionals. I liked that in the sense that she felt more like a real person than an ideal idol.
For familiarity, all my friends enjoyed the singing during the battle since that’s also from the original Macross, though this time it was the good guys getting their butts kicked. XD
The last scene is a play of the Ichijo Hikaru/Rick Hunter’s first battle where he was in gerwalk/hybrid mode emptying his rifle rounds into an unknown alien invader (back then it was a simple battlepod or whatever you call it).
I’ll agree that the introduction of the main characters aren’t that impressive as of now and it doesn’t give a sense of the beginning of an epic series, but I’ll watch it anyway since I practically skipped everything since the original Macross cause I didn’t like everything else that came out after it. O_o;
I also wonder if it’ll be like the original where the best pilot isn’t the actual main character. XD